Is Blogging Good Search Engine Optimization?

by Nick Stamoulis

So you’ve decided that you need to start a blog. Everyone else has one. The competition has two. You think they’re cool (now that you know what they are) and you’d like to start one. Is it good for Search Engine Optimization?

The real answer is, Yes, blogging is good for Search Engine Optimization - if you do it right. If you don’t do it right then it can water down your Search Engine Optimization. Here’s what I mean.
First, the two types of blogs for Search Engine Optimization: On Site and Off Site.

You can put a blog on the same domain name as your website and build your search engine saturation. That means the number of pages you have indexed at the search engines and potentially ranking for your keywords. Every blog post is a separate web page to the search engines so after you’ve written one year’s worth of blog posts (assuming you blog every day), you now have 365 additional web pages. But are they optimized?

With this type of blog, you have to use keywords, alt tags, anchor text, and other SEO elements in order to ensure that you gain the necessary mojo to rank for your keywords.

An off site blog is different. With an off site blog, you’ll still gain search engine saturation, but it will be for the blog itself, not your website. You can, however, build links to your website from your blog and that helps with link building.

Keep in mind, though, that most people in your industry will more than likely link to your blog posts before they’ll link to your company website. If your blog is on your company website, you may or may not get that link love. If your blog is on a separate URL then you’ll likely get link love - if your blog posts are well written and draw attention from other bloggers. That will tend to push your blog higher up in the PageRank scale. If you are linking profusely from your blog to your website then that PR will transfer to your website with each link.

That’s it in a nutshell. Blogging is good for Search Engine Optimization when done correctly. Most bloggers, however, are missing the beat here. To be the most effective blogger, you should learn the principles of Search Engine Optimization.

source : http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com

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Essential SEO Elements Of A Blog Post

Writing by Nick Stamoulis

One of the best ways to increase content is through a blog. A short carefully worded post every day is going to generate over 300 pages per year - that’s allowing for the occasional day off. Posting content alone is not enough; each blog post is a page and requires a search engine optimization program like any other page on your site.

Unlike normal web pages, blog posts are easier to create and do not require extensive knowledge of HTML to create a search engine friendly page. All that is requires is a blog application such as WordPress. However, each post still needs to include several SEO elements to help it rank.
Assuming you have done your homework and developed a list of keywords and keyword phrases, all that is left is to optimize those keywords for the search engines.

Title: Try to work a keyword or keyword phrase into the title. It also helps to place the keyword as close to the start of the title as possible.

Content: From a search engine optimization perspective, you should scatter keywords or keyword phrases throughout the post. From the readers perspective, keep it natural, don’t stuff a keyword in where it doesn’t fit the flow of the sentence. How many times? There is no hard and fast rule as to how many times you use the keyword. General consensus: Once in the first paragraph, as close to the beginning as possible; once in the last paragraph, as close to the end as possible; and once in paragraph - if it fits naturally.

URL: There are blog plugins for WordPress that enable you to craft the URL. Try to include the keyword or keyword phrase into the URL.

Tags: Whilst tags may not help your search engine optimization efforts directly, they may have an indirect effect as social media sites such as Technorati often rely on tags.

Description: Another blog plugin can help provide a description for the page’s meta tags. This is the snippet that may appear in the search engine results so word it in such a way that it draws the user to your site.

These are fairly easy steps to undertake and only take a minute or two to complete prior to publishing your post. The effect is similar to a standard web page that has been optimized. The finished result will have unique meta tags for that page followed by keyword rich content.

To put the final polish to your post’s search engine optimization strategy for your blog, use keywords to link both internally and externally to information that is relevant to the post’s content. Encourage a good range of inbound links and your page will start to rank well. How well? It depends on the competition and your use of keywords.

source : http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com

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