Simple Search Engine Optimization Tips For Blogs

Blogging software is really a simple Content Management System (CMS) that easily adds new pages and integrates them into your site's navigational structure and linkage.

Blogs and blog posts are naturally search engine friendly because they are text-rich, link-rich, frequently-updated webpages that use stylesheets or CSS, and have very little extraneous HTML.

Optimizing a blog is very similar to optimizing a website, and optimizing a blog post similar to optimizing a web page.

But depending on the blogging service or software you use, the results may look somewhat different.

If you follow some simple rules for search engine optimization, your blog can rank much higher than static website pages in the search engine results pages.

Here are the most important rules to follow to get your posts listed for keywords of your choice.

1. Use your primary keyword in your blog domain

Whether you purchase a separate domain (recommended) for your blog, or host it on a blogging service or a subdomain of your own site, try to ensure that your URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for.

For example, if you want your blog to get found for the keyword "rss" get a domain with the keyword "rss", or use the keyword in a subdomain as in

http://ebizwhiz-publishing.com/rssnews

Getting a domain name with your own name might make for good branding, especially if yours is a personal blog.

But if you're doing it for business and want the targeted traffic to flow your way, keywords in the domain or subdomain are a move in the right direction.

2. Use your primary key phrase in your blog header tags and the title of your posts

If your primary key phrase is "business blogging" make sure that the word business, or blogging, or both, appear in your blog headers (the H1 or H2 tags) as well as the title of each of your posts.

Most blogging software will take the keywords in your post title and put them into the file name of the permalink posts it creates.

For example, if you have a blog on Blogger and title your post "Search Engine Optimization For Blogs", Blogger will automatically create a page with your post and name the file "search-engine-optimization-for-blogs.html" or something similar.

With other server-side software like Wordpress and Movable Type, you may require the mod_rewrite command to save the title of your entries as a permalink.

3. Use your secondary keywords in the body of your post

If you want to get listed for secondary keywords use them infrequently in the body of your post and pepper your blog titles or links with them appropriately.

Don't overdo this or your posts will end up sounding unnatural and spammy to readers.

4. Use your keywords in the anchor text of links

Keyword in links have more importance than simple text.

Use your primary and secondary keywords in the anchor text of links when linking to other blog posts or to other pages on your main site.

Link keywords where they naturally appear in the body text, but again, don't overdo it, or you'll end up with spammy looking pages.

5. Make sure search engines can spider your blog easily

Set up your blog so that the side navigation bar is present on all pages.

Make sure your archives and previous posts are accessible from all pages of your blog so they get spidered easily.

6. Get backlinks from other blogs or websites

Links pointing to your blog or posts are essential to build pagerank and make your blog rank higher in the search engine listings.

I've seen many people recommend Blogrolling as one method of building links to your blog.

BlogRolling is a one-stop linklist manager for your blog or journal. But all this service actually does is give you a bit of javascript code that "calls" the links.

As far as search engine rankings go, this method of linking is of little use, because spiders can't read external javascript code.

Instead I recommend that you focus your linking efforts on the methods here.

Submitting to Blog Search Engines and Directories:

Submitting your blog and RSS feed to blog search engines and directories is essential for getting high-quality links back to your blog.

Here is the best list I've found of places to submit your feed or blog.

Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites

Link Exchanges:

Many similarly-themed blogs are often willing to exchange links with other blogs and form richly interlinked networks or communities. Link exchanges with other blogs are easy to implement with most blogging software.

Trackbacks:

You can also get links back to your blog using trackbacks. One of the disadvantages of using Blogger is that it does not automatically create trackback urls that others can use to link back to your posts.

Haloscan is a free service that will automatically add comments and trackbacks to your Blogger blog.

But if trackbacks are an important component of your linking strategy, I would advise using another software or system that adds this feature automatically.

Comments:

You can also get back links to your blog by posting legitimate comments in response to posts on other blogs.

7. Update frequently

There's no better food for search engine spiders than fresh content.

Post and update your blog frequently using all the rules outlined above and there's no reason why your blog will not get you top rankings in a short period of time.

8. Stay put

Once you create your blog, try to stick to the same domain and blog host or system for as long as you continue to publish.

You could end up losing a lot of your traffic, your readers and all your search engine listings if you decide to move.

This article is taken from: http://seo.mcdar.net/4744.php

Now Iam thinking that to make a blog is a very easy thing and to promote it is much easier if you have some unique articles. Iam looking forward to make a blog and host on here.

Hmm... I could use those on my blog too, especially since it's a new one.
But I would like to add that at first is best to promote it a lot among your friends. For an example, I once put a link to my blog as a status on my messenger list and it said "Click for a story". I had a lot of replies on messenger then by people who red it and liked it. If I'll use the same method for a couple of days it would be an easy way to make some loyal readers. It's true, that's not a way to make a very popular blog but it's very easy to start a blog like this and get some comments, because I think that new visitors to your blog that see that you have some comments and regular readers will think that you must have some quality articles since people are coming back to read yout blog and comment on it.
It's very good to exchange links with your blogger friends, if you have any. This could also bring you some new visitors.

Good points contributed by Cedik.

Now days, blogs are the better platform to promote simply. There are many social bookmark sites which are dedicated for blogs. Even the search engines are monitoring blogs continuously rather than sites.

The main thing you need to concentrate is the blog script. Use only popular blog scripts. That helps to make the promotional works very simple.

A very good script, the best if you ask me , is Wordpress. I used it once and it's very easy to install and configure. Actually, I have two blogs on the net using wordpress scripts and I must say that I put them up in just a couple of minutes. Easy as pie.
But for my personal blog ( the others are more a collection of funny stories ) I decided to use blogspot.com because it allows me to run my own adsense ads on the blog and I think it has more advantages than a blog script installed on a free hosting site, since I don't have a domain for it anyway ( at least so far )

yeah bro,inviting friends via mass emails and mass sms really helps a lot.
But search engines other than Google are just acting in a dumb manner. Im looking for double benefit. I m thinking to advertise my blog ruthlessly and then put my personal site url in the top,so that i can get atleast 50% of blog visitors redirected to my site as well..

Lol! Why put it in the top? Just put it in the blogroll )
I did this on my blog. In the blogroll, I do not have only links to other blogs but links to my site too. Too bad now it's down. >.<
Damn this free hosts! I must find a good one and quick!

So long as you keep your blogs filled with fresh useful and informative content - your blog will get crawled in no time. Just remember to ping after every update to send signal to SE's that you have new content on your blog

Just remember to ping after every update to send signal to SE's that you have new content on your blog

Ping is now becomes a big factor on index frequency. Thanks to the scripts like wordpress which integrates this feature for auto ping while posting.