SEO Tips for your Blog
Today, I am going to talk about that part of the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) process, which an ordinary blogger does not know of, or tends to forget while building his blog. Normally, if you are using WordPress as your blogging platform, a bit of SEO is already done for you, thanks to the WordPress development team. But here are some very important key points that you should remember while running your blog. Let us start from the basics and move on to some advanced techniques.
Title Tag
You should never ignore the importance of your <title> tag. The keywords for your blog/website should be included in the title tag and the length of the title tag should fall between 60-90 characters. The search engine spiders always look through your titles while looking for relevant content. In WordPress, the title tag is usually formed by the name of your blog which can be found in Options menu of the wp-admin section.
URL Keywords
Make sure that your keywords are also prominent in your blog links. WordPress saves you from the hard work by providing custom permalink feature, which allows you to choose the suitable link structure as per your requirements.
Keywords in Heading Tags
This is another place where your keywords play a major role. When using WordPress, these tags are commonly used in the post titles (<h2> tags). Remember that your post content should also have those particular keywords that you used in these titles.
Keywords in Image Tags
When using images in your documents or posts, always specify the alt text for the same. Search Engine spiders cannot see the images but they can index their textual descriptions specified in the <alt> tags. This process is also used for validation purposes.
Using Keywords in the Inbound Links
When your blog gets linked from external websites, make sure to use the exact keywords in the anchor text of the inbound links that you want your website to rank for, in the popular search engines. For example, if I want my website to rank for the search term “WordPress Themes”, I will use these words in the anchor text of my inbound links.
Using Keyword Synonyms
Sometimes the search engines look for synonyms of the search terms, so it will be a good idea to optimize your blog/website for the synonyms of your keywords as well.
Keyword Density
Make sure that the keywords that you use in your document or posts are of the right quantity and not overused. For your major keywords, the density should not be more than 7% of the total text.
Linking from Related websites
Inbound links are counted to be healthier if they are coming from similar sites. It basically shows that the competing websites in your niche have voted for your site and this in turn makes your website famous in the relevant community.
Inbound Links from Different IP Addresses
Although there is a lot of controversy on this topic, but some search engines like MSN and Yahoo count multiple links from the same IP as a single link. So, it is always beneficial for you to get inbound links from multiple IP addresses.
Aging Inbound Links
The older your inbound links, the better it is for your website. Just make sure you do not get many inbound links at a single point of time because that will alert the search engines and make them think that you are buying links, which is a no-no nowadays.
Broken Links
Keep checking the links on your website regularly to see if they do not point to resources which are no longer there. If you have broken links, search engines will devalue your website rapidly.
Using Sitemaps
If your website/blog has an accessible sitemap, all your pages will get indexed by the search engines very quickly. You can also submit the sitemap for your website at Google Webmaster Tools.
Using Robots.txt
If you ban search bots from accessing a considerable part of your website by using the robots.txt file, this might affect the unbanned part of your website as well. So, use it wisely.
Great tips on SEO for a website. I’ll keep in mind about adding relevant alt attributes to the images I upload from now on. Would the title of the image also help?
i would to test that your article say about SEO to my blog. Thanks anyway.
thx~“`good article about seo~
great tips. i’m off to fix my website now. thanks.
These tips goes for every website not just the blogs. Pretty basic tips that everyone should follow, some of which are ignored by the webmasters.
Good SEO article, anyway did u upgrade to Wp 2.5 Jai ?
tks.about seo.I have no ways to learn it.
Good tips basically sums it up, this can also be found in seo book and I definitly suggest it to any one looking to get into a little seo, which is pretty much any body that owns a web site.
thanx jai..
i did this SEO changes before…
now i will check im done it accordingly..