Blogging is still one of the best ways to drive traffic toward your site. It’s cheap, easy, and the potential payoff in search engine optimization and positioning is huge. But many blogs flail in obscurity. Why? There are lots of reasons. In just a few short years, blogging has developed into a craft with many dos and don’ts. But all those rules could fill a book (in fact they’ve already filled many books). Right now, we’ll just concentrate on seven easy ways to help your blog get the best search engine optimization and positioning.
1. Submit your blog to DMOZ
DMOZ is a gigantic Web-based open directory. That means that it’s kind of like a huge Internet yellow pages, similar to the Yahoo Directory. But unlike Yahoo, DMOZ is free, which makes it a great resource for search engine optimization and positioning. Every day, the human editors at DMOZ review new submissions and put them in their proper listing. That means that you can have your blog listed in the most appropriate category. It’s also a great research tool; you’ll be able to see other blogs like yours, whether they’re competitors or kindred spirits, or both.
If you’re still looking for a category you want to fit in, then scope out what’s listed at DMOZ. But remember, it’s often better for search engine optimization and positioning if you target a little-used niche as opposed to a category that already offers a slew of blogs.
2. Submit your blog to Vertical Search Engines
Sure, Google is great. But believe it or not, there are some search engines that may be better attuned to the product or service that you’re offering. For example, there’s Fizber for real estate and Searchmedica for medical professionals. Making sure you’re included in these targeted search engines is great for search engine optimization and positioning.
3. Optimize your Post Titles
Optimizing your post titles means that every post has a keyword or keyword phrase that will help your search engine optimization and positioning. In other words, every post title has a word or phrase that’s important to your blog. If you have targeted keywords there’s a good chance of Google ranking you higher.
4. Optimize your Blog Title
This is the same principal using post titles for search engine optimization and positioning. Your blog title should not only be descriptive of what you are blogging about, but it should also contain one or two targeted keyword phrases. It may be tempting to string together every keyword you want to rank for in your blog title, but try not to be too long-winded; shorter titles are more effective and titles that are too long may be ignored altogether by search engines.
5. Use the WordPress SEO pack
WordPress is a free blogging service that already comes streamlined for search engine optimization. And the WordPress SEO pack makes it even easier to craft a lean and powerful blog that gets great search engine optimization and positioning. A tool that’s both useful and fun, the SEO pack lets you your home page title and your meta keywords easily—no knowledge of HTML is required. You can also do nifty things like change your 404 titles and insert keywords into every blog post.
6. Use Header Tags
Google really pays attention to the <h1> and <h2> tags, and lucky you, WordPress lets you insert and edit those nifty tags for better search engine optimization and positioning. You can optimize these headers for your targeted keywords. Those bracket-ringed h1s may look intimidating to those unfamiliar with HTML, but they’re pretty easy to learn. <h1> is simply the largest header on the page. In other words, it’s the headline. <h2> is a slightly smaller header, or the subheadline. For more info on <h1>s and <h2>s, go to the free and useful W3 site.
7. Optimize your Images
This is one that a lot of people overlook. It’s easy to forget that Google can “read” images for search engine optimization and positioning, but it can. What it actually does is read the image’s filename and <alt> tag. That means that if you simply keep your image files as something like “1.jpg,” or “DSC109378.jpg,” then you’re wasting a great optimization opportunity. Instead name your files after target keywords. And don’t forget <alt> tags. They’re the little windows that pop up when viewers hover the mouse over an image. They’re another great way to include extra keywords.
