SEO Techniques For The Blogging Handicapped

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

Here’s a quick SEO technique for your blog:

SEO Your Blog Post Title

Choose a keyword for your post. Make that keyword, or keyword phrase, the first part of your post title. For instance, for this post assume my keyword is “SEO.” I can write a thousand different titles for that keyword but I want to ensure the search engines realize its value as a keyword. That’s why I put it up front. There are several ways you can do this.

• The first way is as I did above: Craft a phrase that grabs the reader’s attention and utilizes the keyword in the pole position
• Another method is to drop the keyword followed by a colon and a catchy phrase, like so:
  SEO: Break Your Crutches And You’ll Be Crawling
• Another method is to ask a question that implies a common mistake can be fixed by reading your blog post, like this:
  Is Your SEO Style Killing Your Blog?

SEO Your Blog Post With Keywords

Be sure to include your keyword in your blog post often. SEO is predicated upon the use of keyword-rich content. With websites, you have meta tags and other elements not visible on the page to help you. With blogs, it’s just you and your content. That’s why SEO must be on the top of your mind as you write your blog posts. Otherwise, all you’ve got is well written text with no search engine benefit.

Don’t stuff your post with your keywords, however. Let it flow naturally. The best SEO is content that flows so well that the reader isn’t even aware of your keywords. But the search engines will notice.

One SEO Technique Often Forgotten: Choosing A Blog Category

Do you have a list of blog categories? You should. Make them keywords that you rely upon often and every time you use a keyword that falls under that category, check the category corresponding to that keyword. For instance, this blog post is categorized under “SEO.” That’s so that search engines will key in on that keyword the most and crawl the blog post looking for that specific keyword. Not that they can’t find others, but by selecting the keyword category for my blog post that most closely is associated with the keyword in my post – in this case, the keyword “SEO” – I am telling the search engines how to crawl my blog post.

Another thing to keep in mind about your blog categories is to choose only one per blog post. You don’t want to water down your SEO. If you choose three or four categories, the search engines may not be as thorough in crawling your blog post as they will look for each occurrence of those keywords in your blog post. If you select a category with a title that does not correspond with your keyword then the search engine may very well not rank your web page at all. That’s why it is important to make your blog categories keywords in and of themselves and to select the blog category that you are using as your primary keyword. You can’t get any better SEO than that.

SEO Tags: Don’t Limit Yourself To Just One

I highly recommend using tags in your blog posts. A tag is a keyword that you use to notify social bookmarking sites that your blog post is SEOd a certain way. In other words, you are telling the Internet community that your blog post contains those important keywords. You don’t just want to use one, but you don’t want to overdo it either.

Your first tag should be your most important, or primary, keyword. In the case of this blog post, SEO. But I am also SEOing this post with secondary keywords. Can you tell me what they are?

If you guessed “blog” and “keyword” you’d be correct. Those are keywords in this blog post that are important but not quite as important as SEO. So I will select those two keywords as tags for the benefit of the social bookmarking sites and blog directories.

SEO Also Involves Anchor Text

Anchor text is a keyword that serves as a link. Within the body of your text, promote yourself by using your keyword as a text link that connects your blog to a specific web page on your website that pertains to that topic as well. For instance, when you click this SEO link you’ll be taken to the “Search Engine Optimization” page on my website. Yes, SEO really is that simple.

SEO Is The Bold Way To Blog

Another way to notify the search engines of the importance of your keywords is to make them stand out by making them bold. When you bold your keywords, you are emphasizing them with stronger importance than other words in your blog post. Search engines note that and place bolded text as higher importance in their SEO algorithms. This technique will give you a leg up in Googleland.

Subheads Like This Will Make Your SEO A Huge Success

Use subheads to break up long text. This is especially important for long blog posts. Be sure to use your keywords in each subhead and make them bold.

Create Two Or Three Signature Links Using Your Important Keywords

Finally, end every blog post with a signature. Two or three lines, each using your important keywords and linking to a page on your website (anchor text), is just another opportunity to SEO yourself right into search engine heaven.

Conclusion

SEO is a matter of thinking through what you are doing and being patient with yourself. You do not have to sell your soul to the devil to create highly SEOd blog posts. You just have to understand all the elements and how they work together. Here’s a recap of the SEO techniques you can use to create dynamic, interesting and search engine friendly blog posts:

• For better SEO, put your keywords in the blog post title
• SEO requires the heavy use of keywords in your text
• Select one, and only one, blog post category
• Use SEO tags and don’t limit yourself to just one
• SEO your blog post with anchor text
• Be bold, those keywords are more important than you realize
• For the very best SEO, put your keywords in subheads that are bold and noticeable
• End your blog posts with two or three keyworded signature lines

If you use these techniques in every blog post, you’ll create highly SEOd content that will make you stand out in the search engines and among your human readers. Oh, and one more thing: Try to use your primary keyword in every paragraph but alternate your secondary keywords, using one in one paragraph and another in the next paragraph. Your secondary keywords should be used every second or third paragraph. You can use every one of these techniques for your primary and secondary keyword with one exception: Choose only one blog category, the one that corresponds to your primary keyword.