Why bloggers should give a sh*t about search engine optimization

Don’t be afraid of search engine optimization

Three little words – search engine optimization (or SEO) – may strike fear into the hearts of many a blogger intent on writing and nothing more, but understanding the basics of SEO can go a long way to getting traffic to your blog for years and years.

I can totally understand why bloggers are “afraid” of SEO. There is a lot of mystery surrounding the subject, but if you learn the principles of how search engine optimization works and apply them to every blog post you write, you could be the owner of a blog that attracts traffic like crazy. Every single day. Forever.

Before running my own sites full-time I worked in the SEO industry. Over the years I have learned a lot of the techniques used by search engine optimization experts, but when I read blog posts by true experts like Rand Fishkin or Danny Sullivan, I realise there will always be something to learn.

As the search engine optimization industry continues to grow and evolve, so do the techniques for attracting search engine traffic. Google is forever moving the goal posts and changing its search algorithm. This has important consequences for SEO experts everywhere, as they have to act upon those changes to retain the rankings they have worked hard to achieve.

Yet, at the same time, there are tried and tested methods that are almost timeless. The title tag for instance. For years it has been a major factor in search rankings and I don’t think that will ever change.

I said earlier in the post that I once worked in the SEO industry. This is true, but I have to admit that I have recently (and stupidly) taken my eye of the SEO ball. This means I have a lot of catching up to do and, inspired by the SEOPressor plugin and the book The Art of SEO, I have taken it upon myself to give each of my sites a good old SEO facelift.

This is no quick fix plan. To go through all of the content and still have time to create new content will take many months, but, if I don’t start somewhere, I will end up in exactly the same spot as I am now.

For the next few weeks I will be working hard on SEO and will publish a few posts here about the subject. For the time being I would like to give you a quick check-list of the various methods you should use each time you write a new blog post in order to ensure your post is as well optimized as possible.

Essential SEO techhiques for each blog post

• Target one keyword phrase (eg search engine optimization) per post
• Use the keyword phrase in the post headline, which also becomes the post title tag
• Use the keyword phrase twice in your meta description, once at the start and again at the end (use no more than 160 characters in total)
• The keywords tags is ignored by Google, but not other search engines, use your chosen keyword phrase at the start
• Use the keyword phrase in the first line of your post. If you can’t get it into the first line, use it as early as possible
• Repeat the keyword phrase in the middle of the post and again towards the end
• Enclose the keyword phrase in header tags – h1 or h2* – at least once in the post
• Use the keyword phrase in the filename of the image that appears first (if applicable) in the post
• Use the keyword phrase in alt tags
• Use words that are related to your main keyword phrase throughout the post, but don’t overdo it. Think about the user experience and if your writing becomes awkward because of keyword repetition, remove the keywords
• Enclose the first instance of your keyword phrase in bold tags

I hope you can see from this list that there is a lot you can do within each post to help you on the way to having a well optimized blog. One word of advice when writing a post; choose your keyword phrase, write the post the way you would normally, and then add the keyword phrase if it has not naturally come out in your writing.

Getting traffic for your chosen keyword phrase is another matter altogether, but that shouldn’t put you off the search engine optimization process.

I have talked about the SEOPressor plugin before. I use it here and find it an essential tool for checking how well optimized a post is as it gives each post an optimization score. I always aim for a minimum of 60% and if you follow the steps above it is quite easily achieved. I think you should take a look at it and seriously consider buying it.

*A lot of WordPress themes are now written with SEO in mind. Twenty Ten for example, which is the new default WordPress theme, is very search engine friendly (I use a modified version of it here). The main headline at the top of this post (and every other post) is contained within a H1 tag, and all sub-headers are contained within H2 tags. The H1 tag is part of the template so I don’t have to worry about that, but as I write my posts (which I do in HTML mode) I manually add the H2 tags wherever I need them. This is what they look like:

I find the HTML editor easier to use. It doesn’t look as pretty as the Visual Editor, but it allows me to watch for, and delete, stray HTML characters that can remain when a post has been edited in the Visual Editor.

If you prefer to use the Visual Editor you should write your subheader, then highlight it with your mouse and choose Heaing 2 from the format menu.

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