SEO Tips to Increase Blog Traffic

April 13, 2010 | Posted in seo tips, Tagged , , , 0 Comments

While it is true that “content is king” in blog publishing, writing blog content is not the only activity that a blogger should do to attract a following.  Quality SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is also important, otherwise the blog remains a well-kept secret — all content and very few visitors.

Many bloggers may not know it, but there are actually several SEO tips that will come in handy to turn an ordinary blog into a highly trafficked site.

Placing Keywords Strategically

One of the most important SEO tips to remember is that search engines like Google and Yahoo, which send out automated web crawlers or “spiders” to categorize and rank all published web sites and blogs in the Internet, do so by searching for relevant content through prominently and strategically displayed keywords.  Make sure to follow the following best practices:

1.  The title (<title>) tag of the website is always crawled (i.e. noticed) by search engine spiders.  The blog with keywords placed in the title tag will be placed higher on search engines.

2.  The heading (<h2>) tags are also commonly crawled.  This means keywords should be incorporated in the titles of each blog whenever possible.

3.  Images in a blog are ignored by the search engine spider, but keywords placed as textual descriptions in the <alt> tags of images are not.  This is one of the SEO tips that is specifically for graphics-driven posts like photography or travel blogs.

4.  Search engine spiders do not ignore keywords in inbound or outbound links to blog sites.  For inbound links from other websites to your blog, this means using the keyword as part of the anchor text (the clickable text in a link).  For outbound links on your blog to other webpages, make sure that your URL link has the keyword.

5.  Another relevant SEO tip is achieving the right number of keywords to preserve keyword density (how frequent the keyword appears in your page).  The blogger has direct control over this metric, by writing blog posts with around 3% keyword density.  More than that could annoy blog readers and the post may be construed as spam. However, less than 7% may cause the spiders to miss the keyword for the blog.

6.  Search engine spiders are also friendly toward keyword synonyms.  So feel free to incorporate synonyms to limit keyword monotony in blog posts, and at the same time continue to optimize your blog site.

Linking for Ranking

Another useful SEO tip is establishing quality links in the blog, particularly incoming links from similar sites.  Similar sites translate to websites that are technically your niche competitors.  Getting competitor  sites to link to your blog is considered a major vote that increases the  blog’s status in your niche circle, as well as in search engine rankings.

Another SEO tip related to links is the setup of long-lasting inbound links.  Aging links are favored by search engines, interpreted as an endorsement by the linking website and as a proof of organic link-building.

On the other hand, avoid broken links at all cost, because search engines will demote blog ranking if they find links to non-existent sites.

Search Engine Algorithms

Different search engines index and rank websites according to their own algorithms, although many SEO tips focus on keywords and link building because they are common to almost all search engines.  Google, in particular, uses sitemaps to index blogs and websites.  The use of the robots.txt file is also another methodology that search engines use to ignore or index a site.  Use the file carefully to ban or un-ban certain portions of your site from search engine rankings.

How to Increase Blog Traffic

February 5, 2010 | Posted in blog, Tagged , , 0 Comments

These days everyone has a blog but most of them float unread out on the internet cloud. So the big question I keep hearing is how do I get more traffic to my blog? The answer is simple, and if you are willing to put in a little time you can do it for free as well.

Blogs are more or less just like any other website out there. Sure they are designed to make it easy for bloggers to post news, images, and video without much computer savvy but in reality they are just user friendly mini-websites. So now that you have one you want to get more traffic to it so here’s a few of the free and basic first steps to increasing your blogs traffic.

#1 Blog About Something People Care About

Seriously – if nobody cares about your blog because it’s just random talk about what you ate that morning you aren’t going to pick up a lot of traffic. However, regardless of how weird your interests may be someone out there also cares about them. So this one is an easy – just blog about something that someone else can relate to.

#2 Submit Your Blog to Directories

This one is also easy but takes a bit of time. There are a lot of free services out there where you can submit your blog to. They are basically like giant phonebooks for blogs and once you add your blog to their service more people will be able to find your blog. You’ll be able to categorize your blog and many of them let you use your own “tags” which are basically key words. Just jump on your favorite search engine and type in something like “free blog submission” and you’ll find lots of sites which can help you out.

#3 Have a Blogroll

Blogs often have a list of links somewhere that lists the other blogs or websites that are related or that the blogger enjoys visiting. If you want to help increase traffic find some sites that will trade you a link on their blog for one on yours. Don’t get too carried away with this though as you can actually lose traffic if you abuse this. This is where you start to get into the internet’s deeper and more inner workings so for brevity we’ll just leave it with this: you don’t want more than about 100 links on your front page or you might actually decrease your chance for big traffic.

#4 Submit Your Blog to Feedreaders

Most blog services have the ability to create a “feed”. You might hear people talking about RSS, syndication, or feedreaders. Basically what this means is each blog creates a list of what posts have been added to it much like headlines for a newspaper. You can find sites out there like the Blog Directories which you can submit your blog feed or RSS to. If you do this they’ll pick up your headlines and people can then dig through them for interesting blogs. The best part about these feed systems is that most continue to check your blog for updates so once you’ve submitted it you can just reap the benefits!

#5 Blog Often and When Appropriate

One mistake some people make with blogging is blogging when they have nothing useful to say just to get another “post” on their blog. If you are doing this then you are going to have a hard time making fans who are interested in saving your page in their favorites or bookmarks. However, you want to often update your blog. If you don’t post regularly then you’ll bore your fans. Blog often, but make sure you’re blogging something of interest.

#6 Make Sure Your Blog Has a Theme

If you’re blog is all over the place you’ll have a hard time putting together a fan base. You may get a few hits here and there by random people but you want to build a community. To do that you’ll probably want to pick a few categories you’re going to post about and stick with them. If you are the type who likes to make random posts sometimes you could just make a category called Random Thoughts or something along those lines but again be careful.

#7 Pingbacks and Trackbacks

If you want people to visit your blog then visit other blogs that are related to yours and get involved. You’ll find that people often leave comments with links back to their own blog or another related blog in the comments. These are part of the pingback/trackback system which can be a lot of fun and also get you a lot of additional traffic. Avoid spamming though as you’ll just irritate potential friends and you’ll likely have your comments removed and lose your comment ability.

#8 Appearance Matters

Every blog service offers templates which can make your blog look unique or have a style you feel fits. Often you can also customize your blog with custom graphics and tinker with the layout. While this can really help your blog be careful that you aren’t making it irritating to potential readers. Not many people want to come to a blog that hurts their eyes to look at or which has loud music they don’t like.

There you go, 8 simple tips on how to increase your blog traffic. The last thing to remember is that building up your blog traffic is going to take time. Depending on the potential number of people interested in your topics and your other blogging related skills it could take weeks and even more likely months to really get things going. If you blog it, they will come!

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