Search Engine Optimization – Why Bother?

By now you’re probably wondering why you should even bother with search engine optimization. You can, obviously, pay a marketing company to place some advertisements on the search engines and get to the top of the results pages very quickly. On the other hand, being at the top of a results page means lots of clicks – clicks you’ll have to pay for.

The best thing you can do to guarantee the success of your blog is to incorporate search engine optimization techniques from day one. Building your blog with your targeted keywords in mind will give you a jumpstart when it comes to getting your website listed by search engines – especially when it comes to climbing towards the top of those listings.

Most properly optimized websites, in the long run, end up performing better than websites that ignore search engine optimization and opt for advertising alone. The reason? Most companies are willing to pay for pay-per-click advertising upfront but eventually exhaust their advertising budgets.

As they end their PPC campaigns and their advertisements disappear they will find that their traffic dwindles, as do their page ranks. Websites that have used proper SEO optimization from the start are more likely to have a steady flow of business over a longer period of time – as long as the site owner continues to maintain the pages.

Let’s face it – search engine optimization may take a bit more time upfront but in the end it will cost less and result in greater conversions from targeted web traffic – regardless of your product, services, or goals. All you have to do to get started is spend a little time on keyword research, create a blog, fill it with great content, and promote yourself. The rest will happen naturally!

5 Important SEO Blogging Tips

Keeping search engine optimization (or SEO) in mind as you blog is crucial to the success of your website. If you’re just starting out you might find blogging to meet SEO standards to be a bit difficult but it doesn’t need to be. Here are five quick tips to keep in mind as you get started.

5. Write Quality Content

There’s a saying amongst bloggers and webmasters that goes like this: “Content is king.” It’s true – and it’s important. The higher the quality of the posts you write – the more information you share- the more people will begin to trust you as an authority on your subject. If they trust you and view you as a valuable resource they’ll begin to link back to your site or directing others right to the post they liked. Posts that earn a lot of attention will earn the attention of the search engines as well.

4. Write Strong Titles

Make sure the title of each post is relevant to what you’re writing about. Google web crawlers, as well as those from other search engines, pay special attention to the titles used on pages and posts. Make sure you include the title of your post or the keywords represented in your post in the title tag that your post creates. You’ll also want to make sure you use strong words in your title, offering valuable insight as to what you’re going to talk about. This will make it easier for your readers to find the information they’re looking for.

3. Pay Attention to Keywords

You should be targeting certain keywords throughout your website and using them repeatedly as you write your posts. Not only should you use your keywords in your titles (as mentioned above) but you should be including them throughout the body of your post as well. If possible, break your post into sections and use your keywords in the header for each section (and use the header tag to make those subheads stand out). Google won’t rank you for a keyword if you don’t use that keyword frequently enough.

2. Deep Linking

Make sure you are not only using your keywords but are also using them to link to other pages on your blog. Yes, links to your blogs on other sites are helpful but linking to your own site (referred to as deep linking) is very helpful as well. Besides, cross linking to your own posts and pages will insure your readers can find the information they’re looking for without having to leave your site to find it elsewhere.

1. Anticipate

The best way to draw attention to your blog is to anticipate what topics people will be searching for and then writing high-quality, keyword-sensitive articles about those subjects. If you were looking for information on how to make a widget what keywords would you type into Google? Think about it and use those words when you write your posts.

It’s really not difficult to create a blog full of great SEO-friendly content. Take a few moments to review every post you write and determine if it is really SEO optimized. If not, tweak it a bit and you’ll be ready to publish!

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

What’s the first thing you do when you sit down in front of your computer to look for a piece of information? You turn to a search engine (like Google, Yahoo!, or MSN) and use their services to find the informatio you’re looking for. In most cases you get hundreds or thousands – sometimes even millions – of search results for any given search word or phrase. So how do the search engines determine which websites make it to the top of the list?

Search engines periodically send their web bots out to “crawl” the internet and search for information. These search engines use special formulas to determine which websites are the most popular. They consider web traffic, the utilization of key words and phrases, and the number of links a website has on other sites – just to name a few. The actual formulas used by each search engine are unknown but we do know that there are several things that can be done to increase your chances of showing up near the top of a search engine’s list.

These tactics fall into the category of search engine optimization. They ensure that your website has all of the components necessary to be noticed by the bots when they crawl the internet searching for new information. They include the proper use of meta tags, keywords, site maps, outgoing links, incoming links, the use of original content, and much more. These are all things you need to keep in mind from the moment you start building a blog. The more attention you pay to these little details the better your chances of being noticed by the search engines.

Over the coming days we’ll talk a look at the different aspects of search engine optimization, or SEO. Keep these ideas in mind as you being to build your blog or website and, subsequently, write content to fill its pages. You can’t trick the serach engines into giving your site great page ranking but if you follow some standard SEO techniques you’ll find your website climbing the search engine ranks before you know it!