Blogs Blogging & Search Engine Optimization

Originally conceived to be something like an online journal for individuals has become yet another tool businesses can use to market themselves online. Web logs or blogs are now being used not just for the sheer purpose of writing, but also as means SEO (search engine optimization) experts use to increase a website’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERP).

An interesting thing about keeping and maintaining a blog (also known as blogging) is that anyone can blog. What will make a blog more successful than most is simply a keen sense of its target readership. Of course, it will not harm the blogger (a person maintaining a blog) to possess a few basic skills navigating the Internet and creating links to other websites and blogs.

Bloggers today are finding that they can not only write and publish their thoughts for free, but also can find themselves getting compensated for writing. This is because one of the techniques in SEO is to create content that is rich in keywords, which is basically what search engines look for in ranking web pages in its SERPs.

That said, here are some tips to make your next blog an effective SEO tool.

1, Choose a Theme (and Stick to It)
Most blogs never gain a real readership because it simply is a mishmash of a writer’s thoughts, with very little coherent theme to bind the entire blog together. If the blogger does it for the sheer purpose of a journal, there’s really nothing wrong with that.

However, as an SEO, a blog has to have a theme that will tie all the posts (individual articles) together. This is because instead of just looking for keywords, a search engine will also assess whether the page just happens to have a lot of keywords mentioned in the post or whether the entire blog is about the topic it is searching for. The former will rank less than the former in the SERPs. Given this point, it will do you well to pick a theme that you are interest and won’t tire of writing about.

2. A Place You Can Call Home
Working alongside the idea of a theme, When creating your blog (whether with your own domain name or an a free blog site), give it a URL that has words related to the theme. For example, if you are going to blog about bonsai making, try to use words that are related to that in your blog’s URL (such as www.bonsaienthusiast.com). Name your blog using words that are relevant to your theme as well. Search engines look at these things as well to determine how high your blog could possibly rank.

If you are blogging on a hosting site, it is possible to have your blog delegated into a proper category. This will help make a search engine easier to find your blog given that the category is strongly related to themes and search keywords.

On a related note, your individual posts should also be titled with words that are closely related to your theme. Again, working on a blog with a bonsai theme, one post could be titled “Miniature Trees: How to Get Started” while another one could be “Selecting the Right Pot for a Bonsai”. This will give your posts a URL that is rich in keywords, which helps in a page’s ranking on SERPS (but you already know that, right?).

3. Link And it Shall Be Linked Unto You
Another thing about blogs that SEO experts are finding to become a great advantage is the fact that blogs make it easy to link to other blogs, which in turn makes it easy for other blogs to link to you.

This is yet another criterion a search engine uses to rank a particular page in the results pages. The more incoming links it possess about the keyword in search will increase ranking status because the page shows that a lot of people think what you’ve written is a good source of information.

So when writing on your blog, be sure to take the time to read other people’s blogs and other online articles related to your theme. Create links to them so that you point your readers to more information. This will increase the chances of other people creating links that will point to your blog.

4. Keep it Coming
Since blog content is so easy to create, search engines scour blog sites very regularly. That means if you keep on creating new content on a regular basis, search engines will have to keep up with what’s new on your blog.

By regularly creating fresh content on your blog, search engines will tend to look to your blog first before others that are not maintained and renewed as regularly as you do. It helps in the rankings as well, which is the whole point of this article, right?

These tips are just to get started on using a blog for SEO. As you go along, you’ll find more tricks of the trade that will help you push you up the ranks on SERPs. Of course realistically, don’t expect to rank on the top 3 pages on your first try. But give it a few weeks. And for as long as you keep to the tried and true principles, it may not be that far until you’ve captured a good ranking for your blog.

Free internet Marketing Resources

Use Your Email Account to Advertise Your Blog

If you have a blog that you are particularly proud of,
And that you want to share with other people, there
are a lot of free ways that you can get your blog
noticed.

One of those ways is something that you do everyday,
and that you may not even consider as a way to share
your blog. Put the link to your blog in your email
signature.

Chances are that you send out emails more times that
you can count during the day, each time you send out
an email, you can advertise your blog by putting the
address of your blog in your email’s signature.

It’s always a good idea to write something catchy
like, See what I am up to now, or Read my latest
chapter of my blog here, depending on what type of
blog you have.

The thing to remember about putting an advertisement
in your signature for your blog is to make it short,
but eye-catching.

You want people to be interested enough to want to
click on it, but you also don’t want to scare them
off.

Just like it is with any advertisement, you want to
give them just enough to be interested and take a
closer look at what it is that you are advertising.

Think about what it is that your blog is about. What
is really going to interest people about it and make people want
to visit. That is what you should include in your
signature, and that is what is going to get people to
go to your blog.

Free internet Marketing Resource

Great Place to Advertise Your Blog

No matter what type of blog that you have, one of the
best places that you can advertise your blog is to
join a blogger forum. After all, everyone who posts
there has a blog and that’s the main subject.

It’s a great place to meet other bloggers and to
advertise your blog.

There are quite a few blogger forums that you can sign
up for on the Internet. One is known as Bloggeries,
where you can show off your blog, get your blog
reviewed or review other blogs, and find lots of tools
that you can use for your own blog.

Another good place to go is to Blog Forum.

Blog Forum, like Bloggeries, has spots for you to
market and show off your blog,

Blogger forums are a great place to advertise because
everyone in them are of the same mind and want to make
certain that their blogs get noticed and read.

If you use your blog to advertise something that you
are selling, or you want to get a lot of traffic to
your blog in order to make money, you want to go
someplace where it can get exposure.

When you advertise on a blog forum, you know that you
are placing your advertisement in a place where
blogging is something that people enjoy.

Just remember when you are posting to a forum to read
the rules and abide by them. That way you’ll get your
blog noticed and you will know that you are doing the
right thing.

Free internet Marketing Resources

Blogging Directories Great Advertising

If you want to have more people visit your blog, there
are plenty of blog directories on the Internet that
you can submit your blog to so that people will come
and visit it. Most blog directories are listed by the
topics that the blogs that are submitted cover.

Blog Catalog is a free blog directory that offers
categories such as career and jobs, writing, Iraq, and
many others. It has features such as featured blogs
and other things to offer those who submit their blogs
there.

Another great place to add your blog is
blog-drectory.org. Not only do they have an an
extensive list of categories with sub categories, you
can get your blog reviewed. For the most popular
blogs, it shows the amount of hits that blogs have and
if they have any reviews. As well as listing by
category, the blogs are also listed by location.

There are other blog directories on the. But blog directories
are a great place to advertise your blog and to make
new friends. You never know what you will find when
you browsing through the directory, and you may just
find out information that you never knew. Some of the
blog directories offer chat features as well, so that
you can meet other people easily.

As you can see, blog directories are a great place to
get your blog noticed and bring people to read your
blog and look at your pictures.

Free internet Marketing Resources

Blogging Website Traffic - Give And Take

Blogging traffic is a give and take relationship.

Sometimes one of the best ways to get traffic to your

blog is by visiting someone else’s blog.

Go to their blog and read one of their entries, or

read a few of them. Chances are that you are going to

find something that you have in common.

When you find something that you find truly

interesting on a blog, leave a comment so that they

know that you were there.

One of the best known blogs available is LiveJournal.

A great feature of LiveJournal is that you can search

for interests on their site and it will come up with

results of those who have that interest.

Are you interested in horseback riding? You can see

what other bloggers are interested in horseback riding

as well.

When you are commenting on someone’s post, you want to

make sure that you don’t leave generic comment. If you

like the post, say something about what you read in

the post.

After you have commented on the person’s post, then

you can say something like, ‘I really like horseback

riding too. I had a similar experience to yours.’ and

then use it to link back to your journal.

But be sure that you sound sincere when you are

commenting, and don’t make them feel like you’re just

fishing for traffic.

If someone thinks that you are using their blog to get

more traffic to yours, they won’t visit your site and

your efforts will be wasted.

Free Blog Traffic Internet Marketing Resources