How to Use Proper SEO With a Blog

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a way of improving traffic to your websites by improving your search hits. It is like marketing based on search engine algorithms. This means the way search engines process information. The steps below will show you how to use proper SEO to achieve better results. Knowledge of HTML code will be very helpful here.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

1. Create good content. This is driven by alot of text. If you have images, animations and videos, it may make your site look great but won't do you any justice when being read by the search engine. So, find a way to incorporate alot of text in everything you put on your site such as HTML tags, page titles, headers, links, etc. These are big when it comes to search engines.
   

2. Create original content. If you do not have original content (content that you have written in your own words) and borrowed (plaguirized) your information as text, when search engines read your site, it will find this. Search engines do not like copied material. It will use the original source, negating yours which will do you no justice.
   

3. Create authoritative content. Sound like you know what you are talking about. People who visit your site will tend to return to your site if they find it more informative than other sites. Especially if the information they gather from your site makes a huge impact on their lives and decision making. Word of mouth can travel far and will drive more traffic to your site.
   

4. Keep your content focused on one thing. You want to come up with a topic and stick to it in every way possible. If you want to talk about iPods, then make sure everything on that site has to do with iPods.
   

5. Your page title should be short, simple, to the point and content-relevant. If you are selling iPods, make sure your title has something to do with selling iPods. Do not promote another service.
   

6. Use proper markup language. This is where your knowledge of HTML code will come in useful. If you are not familiar with this or just don't feel comfortable, get someone else to do it. This plays a huge part in the grand scheme of things. This is going to create the look and feel of your site. Be sure to validate it, use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and stay away from stuff like Javascript and Frames if possible.
   

7. Keep everything in one place. By keeping your site in one place and giving it a simple and stable URL, this allows visitors to always find your site or link to it. This will also allow search engines to give it a trust value.
   

8. Promote your site. You can do just about anything to help promote your site. Friends, family, conferences, trade shows, mailing lists, newsgroups, forums, directories, webmasters, bloggers, radio and TV are just a few. Also try using Banners, Badges, Audio and Video, AdSense and AdWords on other sites.
   

Tips & Warnings

• Try working on one aspect of SEO and do it until you get it right. Find out what works best for you then go from there. Go on to the next thing, so on and so on. Understanding how everything works and knowing what you are doing are the best tips and that can only come from experience. Trial & Error!
• Avoid anything that seems to good to be true. Getting sucked into false promises and pipe-dreams can cost you alot more than time. Just remember...if you want to be successful, you're going to have to do alot of the research and work yourself. When you're ready, be sure to invest your money where you know it will pay off.

[dahawe]

on 1/25/2008 Lots of good tips! Much of this info I did not know before, thanks!