How to (& how not to) Optimise Your Blog for Search Engines
This article is about improving your blog's 'searchability' (if that's a word) by a search engine, giving it a better chance to be ranked higher on the search engine's results page (SERP). However we want to improve our blog's searchability in a search engine-friendly way so that our blog won't be blacklisted from a SERP. To do so, we want to employ the White Hat SEO techniques ONLY and not the Black Hat SEO techniques.
To learn more about White Hat SEO techniques visit Blog-Maniac here and for more about Black SEO techniques jump onto ABCSEO's website here.
But just quick run-down on what white hat and black hat SEO techniques are...if you want to run a quality blog and stay on Google's good-side, you'll want to avoid black hat and keep to the white hat techniques.
To learn more about White Hat SEO techniques visit Blog-Maniac here and for more about Black SEO techniques jump onto ABCSEO's website here.
But just quick run-down on what white hat and black hat SEO techniques are...if you want to run a quality blog and stay on Google's good-side, you'll want to avoid black hat and keep to the white hat techniques.
Why? Well, White Hat techniques are seen as the right way of employing techniques onto a blog or website in order to be ranked higher on a search engine's results page and...
...Black Hat techniques on the other hand are seen as the wrong way of employing techniques onto a blog or website in order to be ranked higher on a search engine's results page. So if you employ black hat SEO techniques, there's good chance you might get blacklisted from ever showing up on a SERP. Now on to the important stuff.
Best SEO Techniques to Use to Enhance Your Blog
1. Keyword Effectiveness: Ever heard of the acronym K.I.S.S; Keep It Simple Stupid. This acronym, for this article applies to your headings & titles. When a user types in a keyword or keywords in a search engine, they would more likely use simple terms. So making sure your titles and the content within your articles are simple (no advanced, over the top synonyms), will give your blog a better chance to be pulled up on a search engine's list of results or SERP (PushOn, 2011).
2. Quality Inbound Links: Besides a search engine, the second best way to receive potential users is to have links coming in from other sites or referring sites to yours (SEOMethod, 2011). By increasing the amount of sites that refer to yours, search engines like Google would place more emphasis on blogs that contain more inbound links thus increasing your rank on a SERP.
3. SEO Tools or Software: There are so many SEO-based tools & software out (some free) that you can use to your blog's benefit. For a more comprehensive list of SEO tools see SEOBook, a website which has compiled a list of great SEO tools & software. Two of my favourite SEO tools to use are listed below.
Best SEO Techniques to Use to Enhance Your Blog
1. Keyword Effectiveness: Ever heard of the acronym K.I.S.S; Keep It Simple Stupid. This acronym, for this article applies to your headings & titles. When a user types in a keyword or keywords in a search engine, they would more likely use simple terms. So making sure your titles and the content within your articles are simple (no advanced, over the top synonyms), will give your blog a better chance to be pulled up on a search engine's list of results or SERP (PushOn, 2011).
2. Quality Inbound Links: Besides a search engine, the second best way to receive potential users is to have links coming in from other sites or referring sites to yours (SEOMethod, 2011). By increasing the amount of sites that refer to yours, search engines like Google would place more emphasis on blogs that contain more inbound links thus increasing your rank on a SERP.
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| The more inbound links you have the better. Google uses this info to sort its Pagerank results (Su, 2011, slide 36). |
3. SEO Tools or Software: There are so many SEO-based tools & software out (some free) that you can use to your blog's benefit. For a more comprehensive list of SEO tools see SEOBook, a website which has compiled a list of great SEO tools & software. Two of my favourite SEO tools to use are listed below.
- SEOMoz's Ranking Checker: This tool is allows you to view the most typed-in keyword (up to 5 keywords) in your embedded search function. Using this sort of information, you can then re-arrange the content on your blog to suit the level of punctuation your users are using to find content on your blog, plus many other reasons (SEOmoz, 2011).
- WeBuildPages' Strongest Subpages: This tools allows you view those pages which viewed more frequently or have more activity than others. You can do the same thing for your competitors' blogs (WeBuildPages, 2011).
Reference List (for further reading, you can follow up on the links below):
1. Google. (2011). Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Retrieved August 24th, 2011 from http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35291
2. Internet Empire. (2011). SEO - The Difference Between White Hat & Black SEO. Retrieved August 24th, 2011 from http://www.internet-empire.com/seo-the-difference-between-black-hat-and-white-hat-seo.htm
3. PushOn. (2011). Top 5 White Hat SEO Techniques. Retrieved August 25th, 2011 from http://www.pushon.co.uk/articles/top-5-white-hat-and-black-hat-search-optimisation-techniques/
4. SEOMethod. (2011). The SEO Method. Retrieved August 25th, 2011 from http://www.theseomethod.com/
5. SEOmoz. (2011). Rank Tracker. Retrieved August 25th 2011, from http://www.seomoz.org/rank-tracker.
6. WeBuildPages. (2011). Strongest SubPages Tool. Retrieved August 25th 2011 from http://www.webuildpages.com/seo-tools/strongest-subpages-tool.php.
7. Su,Veronica. (2011). 3623ICT Information and Content Management: Week 05. Retrieved from Griffith University, School of Information Communication Technology, Learning@Griffith Website: https://learning.secure.griffith.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_100323_1&frame=top.
