SEO Tip number 2: Use Keywords as Much as Possible

Last time, we emphasized how writing better can help boost your blog’s search engine ranking. This time we’ll be talking about keywords. Keywords help search engines understand what your content is all about. When you have chocolates for a keyword, then it’s clear to them that your blog is about chocolates.


Basically, these are what keywords do to your blog:

• Search engines index your blog using these keywords
• People will find your blog easily
• Search engines will rank you better (depends on how you’re using your keywords)
  

The last part comes with a pair of parenthesis because if you’re just putting too many keywords with the intention of getting more traffic and more visibility on those keywords with an absent or weak consistency with your actual content then you’ll end up in “Google’s sandbox” where you either get less indexing or no indexing at all.


Maximize the benefits you get from keywords by putting them in some or all of these areas depending on what best fit your blog:

***Arranged in order of importance***

• Keywords in the title tag
  This is the title that appears in your browser’s topmost portion or, in tabbed cases, in the tabs. This can be your blog’s title or your post’s title. It’s best if you have a blog title that serves as a keyword for what your blog is generally all about. Also, every time you write a post, make sure that it contains keywords relevant to your post’s body.


• Keywords in the body text
  Your keywords must also be found in your post’s body text, especially in the opening paragraph. This is where you’ll generally form other related keywords and keyword phrases. Always remember that they should help make sense of your post and not stand out as if accidentally placed in there. However, if too many keywords would demise your post’s reader experience, don’t sacrifice it. Readers should always come first.


• Keywords in H1 tags
  They are also called header tags along with H2, H3, and H4. They add emphasis to your blog’s headings and sub-headings similar to bold (b/strong) or italics (i/em). Although it’s not too necessary, it must be emphasized in well optimized page and very useful for organizing page content.


• Keyword in your domain name
  Okay, this part hits me clearly. What’s “ulupong” got to do with earning money online or blogging? Anyways, if you’re just about to buy a new domain or start a new blog, think of a name that makes sense with the general topic or niche of your blog.


• Keywords in anchor texts
  Anchor texts are weighed highly in search engine algorithms, because the linked text is supposed to be relevant to the landing page.


• Keywords in images
  The Alt and Title attributes are usually the ones involved here. Their values should contain keywords also. The image filename also has to be, at least, relevant to your post. It might not help you that much in rankings but when it comes to image searches, which most search engines incorporate nowadays, it’s definitely a plus.


• Keywords in bold tags
  Not critically important but try using it at least once or twice in your posts.


• Keywords in meta tags
  Back when the search engines were still young and naïve, these tags were heavily used to index every site available in the web. Today, although there are still who argue that it’s still useful, SEO leaders hardly believe they have any importance at all. These are “meta description” and “meta keyword” tags which is found in your blog’s head tags.

Keywords can be a pain in the ass if you’re not used in actively incorporating them in your blog but the reward will always be great as long as you use them wisely and appropriately.

The only thing that’s a big “DON’T” in keywords is overusing them which basically tears your blog’s value apart unless yours is a “splog”.

If you have anything else to add here, please feel free to do so in the comments area.



technorati tags: SEO tips, keywords

SEO Tip number 1: Write Better

Okay, like what I said the last time, here we are again telling you what I know about SEO. Like the title indicates, to get ranked high in your favorite or any other search engine, you must learn how to write better. By better, this means writing something with quality and of value to your readers and visitors. Write with the intention that your readers will pick something up from your post after they’ve read it. Also, your writing frequency must not be so sporadic (like what I’m doing) leaving your readers clueless about when you’ll be posting next.


Write quality content

By writing articles that people will want to read, it’s easy to get inbound links from other people, especially bloggers like you, without actively asking them. It’s like flowers in the park, the more colorful and attractive it is, the more it steals the passerbies’ attention. By having other sites to refer you, the more your blog’s profile will be picked up and crawled by search engines. By writing quality content, the possibility of referral links from other blogs (especially high-profile blogs) and websites (what more if it’s the front page of well known social bookmarking sites such as Digg) is high.


Write niche-focused posts

Make it a habit to write tightly focused posts relevant to your blog’s theme or topic. Try to avoid posts that have a very wide coverage that it even goes beyond what your topic asks of you. Smaller more focused pieces will help search engines index your posts into a more specific keyword related to your blog. Also, the more streamlined your blog becomes at a particular niche the more search engines will find keywords in it which can help you get higher page rank on searches based on those keywords and the more search engines will find you as an authority on that same topic.


Write regularly

Don’t even consider writing something like 3 posts this day and then write again on the next month. Besides losing your loyal readers that way, it will also be bad for search engines’ indexing frequency on your blog. If you keep on doing that, instead of having them crawl your site every time you post something, they might index your new post on the following month. Of course it’s only in theory but it’s a possibility. After all, search engines work based on your blog’s update behavior. Without a fixed schedule on when you’ll be updating your content, the more unlikely and unexpected indexing patterns you’ll get from them.

The best way to avoid this is by writing at least three or four times a week; of course there will be some bloggers who’ll be disagreeing since they have their own share of successes in search ranking without doing the same. Okay, it might be true for them but I believe that it’s always best to play it safe.


Tagging and Pinging

Okay, it’s got nothing to do with writing better but what’s wrong with a hefty helping from a few tricks to help your hard-work get indexed faster. Tagging and pinging is a technique used by many marketers and SEO experts (black, blue, or white) to keep their content served fresh to many organic visitors (“organic” means those visits referred directly by search engines).

How is it done you may ask? It’s simple actually. First, after you’ve finished writing and proof-reading your post, place tag/tags beneath the post by means of Technorati. A tag is a keyword or anything significant which you think best describe, categorize, or represent your post. From what I remember back in 2006, people insert this code in their posts html before they publish it: <a href=“http://technorati.com/tag/tagname” rel=“tag”>tagname</a> (just replace the instances of “tagname” **without the quote** with your desired keyword). Today, I still see people use this; you can also see me using one under this post. Technoratti use it to categorize your post so when a person searches for a tag such as “love”, if your post is also tagged the same then you’ll end up in his search results. The built-in labeling or categorizing system which your blog platform provides is also used by Technorati to tag your post in case you’re not using their tag code.

Okay, enough of that. After you placed the technorati tag and published your post you can tag it further through the social book-marking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, and Del.icio.us. You can use the same tags you used on technorati here. It’s best to keep your tags similar to your keyword or topic since search engines will also consider indexing your post through these tags.

After that, you’ll have to ping. Pinging is something like sending a message to the search engines and blog searches that your blog has updated already and they are free to crawl and index it. Blogspot (Blogger) blogs ping Weblog.com and Google when they publish. Wordpress has plugins to ping also. Feedburner also offers a service which lets you ping search engines and blog searches. If you’re still not satisfied, go to http://pingomatic.com.

How does these all work? Basically, it’s spreading your message in the right places that your blog is already serving new content. The tags serve as links that will point back to your blog, a sort of technique to give the search engines a hint where they should be crawling since your trails are scattered in all directions. The pinging on the other hand tells the search engines that you have a fresh content and they must index it. So tagging + pinging equals an opportunity to get noticed and ranked by search engines.


Before I go finish this post, be advised that tagging and pinging, if abused, may lead to disastrous and dire consequences. Your rankings will drop, search engines will stop indexing you, etc. all because they will consider you as spam because you’re showing irregular behavior characterized by a spam site. Don’t overdo the tagging such as signing in using different accounts in Digg or other social bookmarking sites to Digg and tag your site just to get high traffic and higher page rank. It’s always best that your traffic and search engine ranking boosted because you deserved it not because you forced it.


technorati tags: SEO tips, better writing

SEO tips for your blog (series)

I’ve been planning to write this series for a long time. And after about two weeks of absence, I finally got a hold of my schedule to address this itch to start it at least.

Here we go SEO. Okay, first the definition. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. I’m sorry I can’t provide you with a very accurate definition but from what I understand, it’s meant to give your blog or site a lot of traffic, a lot of traffic because you ranked better in search engines. When you rank high in search engines, you will end up among the first results of what people are searching for giving you more presence to your potential visitors compared to those who end up in the last pages which people hardly even browse at.

As an example, let’s put it this way. Let’s say you have a blog about “80s new wave music”. When people search for the keyword 80s, new wave, 80s music, 80s new wave, etc (any keyword related to your blog’s niche), the possibility of your blog ending up in the first few result pages of their search depends upon how you rank in that particular keyword in the search engine they are using. SEO will help you get in the first three result pages, if not in the immediate ones, where people will more likely click and get sent to your blog. That means you’ll get more traffic. When you rank low or perhaps have no ranking at all, you’ll inevitably land in the forgotten realms of the “last result pages” which I doubt you even look at when doing your own searches. I assure you that you wouldn’t like being in it.

If you want to have a really sizeable number of traffic which you could proudly claim as “your blog’s traffic”, then you definitely have to use SEO. Of course, there are other methods to get traffic into your blog besides search engines but they are usually the ones that bring bulk visits and potential customers (if you’re into professional blogging).

Now, how do you use SEO to get a better ranking? First and foremost, there are some things you have to understand about SEO. It’s nothing easy. Yes, there are easy ways to do it, but certainly there are also the difficult ones although not impossible. SEO also takes time. It’s nothing like magic that works instantly over night. It’s an aggregate effect of your constant hard work that piles up to get you higher and higher into what you want to achieve.

One thing to take note also is that the older your blog becomes the better search engines will index it, hence an additional factor to have a better ranking in them. This is one measure search engines use to combat spamming and one of the reasons why I say that it’s nothing instant.

Also, the more comprehensive, relevant, and keyword rich your blog gets, the better its ranking will also be. With SEO you’ll be able to achieve such.

And lastly, I hope you’re getting what I’m trying to tell you. SEO is not a piece of code or a tool that you’ll just copy and paste into your blog’s HTML code. It’s something that you need to do. Something that you have to constantly adhere to although there will be some occasions where you may opt not to have to; that’s okay.

I’m not sure how long or short this series will run, but I’ll try to be as informative albeit not too comprehensive about each SEO tips that I’ll be posting. So, if you’re really interested in what I have to say later on, please subscribe to my RSS feed.

And before I leave you, I’ll be leaving you with one SEO tip that will be part of my next post. “Post Regularly” – Hell, yes and something that I should really be doing one of these days. Just do what I say, okay, not the things that I do.



technorati tags: SEO, tips

6 More Tips to Get More Comments in Your Not So New Blog

Last time I wrote about how you’ll get people to comment on your new blog. To tell you the truth, I haven’t done any of it here but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t either. I have my reasons why I choose not to just yet. You see my application for “domain registration” is currently a pending process and I’ve still to make a few more posts before I decide to get public which means I’d still be doing it but in a much later date.

Now, what if you’re already getting comments, maybe five or six, and still you felt that you need more in order for people to say that you’ve got one busy and popular blog. Basically, you’ll just have to continue doing what I’ve written earlier but there will be some changes since you’re no longer asking for just “someone” to comment but you want more “someones” to comment.

Here are the things that, again, I’ve managed to put together after reading several… (yea, yea, yea, they all know that already):

1. Write a compelling headline. I’ve been an avid reader of copyblogger lately and that’s one of the many lessons I learned from Brian Clark (also one of the unique things that got me into reading his blog which I barely find being emphasized on other blogs). You should write a grabber headline for your post that people will want to read it. Capturing their attention, and what more if it’s their imagination, will definitely get them to comment in your post, or perhaps subscribe to your blog. Either way, you still got them. Headlines that address their desire, their problems, or lead them into something exclusive or a secret will definitely be a head turner. Also “whys” and “how tos” are an effective attention grabbers especially if they’re relevant. See more of these here.
   


2. Write better content. Definitely, content is king. People should learn from you. Your content becomes valuable to people if it teaches them something or they learn something from it. Of course, don’t try to mislead them into false information you made up. They’ll know about it later, and you’ll be in a very bad position once they do. From my experience also, your content will not only be valuable but more memorable if there’s a bit of humor in it. If content is king, humor is like its queen or something…


3. Be controversial. Also called “link-baiting”, if your content can’t attract too much attention from being better (in your own point of view of course), why not be aggressive enough to be controversial. Putting in controversy has worked for some bloggers in getting a deluge of comments although I’m less likely to resort in this form of comment generation. One drawback of this technique, which I can’t bare having all the time, is the negative responses you’ll get everytime.


4. Reward your commenters. Nothing gets into the heart of your readers especially those who leave their comments than being appreciated. I believe it makes them feel warm and all fuzzy inside. One way of doing it is by dedicating a post to answer one or several comments that strike you the most, quote the comment/s of course. You can also try placing a “top commentator” portion in your blog. There are still many ways to acknowledge and encourage their participation which you can try.


5. Observe blogs and message boards that discuss your industry. From observing them, you might get a chance to get some valuable tricks of the trade on how to get more comments and readers. You might also see which topics or trends are increasingly becoming popular and highly commented. And as often as possible, leave comments on these sites. Just make sure that your comments will add value to the discussion. This will not only make the blogger more likely to read and comment on your blog, but will give their readers a reason to check out your blog as well.

What do you think? Any ideas you can add? Share it here.



technorati tags: comment generation, blogging tips

How to Get Comments on Your New Blog

Okay, so you’ve got a new blog like I do, what do you do in case you wanted to have people commenting in it, at least to keep you inspired to write better each day? After reading 30 posts or so (really, no kidding, most of them say the same things anyway) about making your blog comment-friendly, I managed to put together at least 10 tips that will prove really useful in giving you the comments you desperately need. (Please remind me to do these things also. XD)

1. Find topics that people can’t stop talking about. There are some topics that simply put people dumbfounded or out of opinion. And yet, there are also those where they seem to be more inclined at talking about. Find topics that your readers can easily relate to. Perhaps, reading blogs similar to your niche that gets commented fairly will give you some ideas.


2. Hint your readers that you need them to comment. Write in an open-ended manner that will make them feel like sharing their views each step of the way. You can start your headline with a question, put one or several within your post, or perhaps wrap your post up with something as common as; “what do you think?” This will encourage them to leave their comments.


3. Invite your readers to comment. Maybe they didn’t get your hints a while ago. Try asking them to comment literally. Instead of showing “0 comments” in your post-footer, how about changing it into “it’s always free to comment here”, or “add your views to the conversation”. Additionally, you can always ask them up front in your post to drop their comments to give them a sense that it’s ok for them to share their thoughts.


4. Intentionally leave your post less comprehensive or a bit incomplete. People like it when they become expert at times and they get to point out things. Leaving a few things out will always guarantee you someone commenting about how stupid you are at missing some things. Of course, you can always forgive them for that. The point here is that you’re giving them the opportunity to share their expertise on the matter. You could also do this more directly, and challenge them to add what you’ve missed.


5. Keep your posts short. Whenever I encounter a very long post, I’ll always (guaranteed 100%) skip it and look for something more “dummy-friendly” (ok, not that dummy-friendly, but something that takes less effort to read). It always intimidates readers to continue reading through a lengthy post. Skimming inevitably always sets in where they almost often miss the information they really want, the information that’s going to get them to comment.


6. Write less frequently. 1 to 2 posts is enough to call it a day. This is the best way to give attention and focus to your posts from the readers. Too many posts will give your readers a hard time to follow-up leading to less engagement from them, hence fewer comments. Of course, there are always exceptions; but for the most part it has always been the case. The less post, the more you and your readers can interact substantially.


7. Be active in your own comment threads. If there’s nobody commenting in your blog, maybe your readers are just waiting for someone to begin the conversation. Comment first like adding additional notes about what you’ve just written. If you feel like you’re just talking to yourself, how about leaving a comment as somebody else just to start things going. Also, don’t forget to respond to your readers’ comments in case things aren’t clear to them. It just shows that you’re reading and acknowledging what they’ve just left.


8. Be welcoming. When replying to your commenters, don’t be tactless and/or harsh. This will scare them away. Always be humble and civil. Alternatively, you can be humorous but be sure that you’re not hurting or humiliating any of your commenters when you do. They must feel welcomed and able to relate and talk to you. Of course you can’t avoid occasional trolls here and there. It’s best to ignore them, but when they get too personal, just delete their unsolicited antagonism.


9. Comment back. If you like to get comments in your humble little blog shack, the same goes for the rest of the humble bloggers out there. So why not comment on other blogs. Most definitely there will be those who will reply back and possibly become a frequent commenter in yours. Also, follow your commenters back into their blogs and leave a comment in one or two of their post. This will make a great impression on them, and it shows that you appreciate their comment enough to want to contribute your own.


10. Make it easy to comment. Lastly, don’t give your readers a burden commenting into your blog. Remove registrations, and extra features that will consume a lot of time to get through before they could leave a simple “hello”. It’s understandable that everybody’s fearful of spams these days but there are always other means to combat these abominations without giving your readers hurdles that would intimidate most to communicate with you.

Hmm. I guess that’s it. I’d like to believe that you’re now already itching to leave your comments in here. Let me be the first to assure you that it’s ok to do so. All views are welcome and will be accepted gratefully. (oh, how I desperately need someone to comment…)



technorati tags: comments, new blog

10 Easy Ways to Boost Your Blog’s Traffic

First off, a disclaimer; this post will not increase your blog traffic unless you take action and do it. The same applies to me. I won’t gain traffic unless I take action and do what I’m saying here. Damn, when will I do it? Okay, all set, here we go.

1. Content
   All “How to-Blogs” including those that aren’t but decided to post one anyway will always tell you to post regularly to improve your traffic. It’s true. Now, post regularly.
   Create useful or informative content. People use the internet most of the time to get information; so it would really be nice if they could say things like: “hey, this stuff’s informative and useful (LOL)” when they visit your blog. Another tip on content that you’ll find bloggers saying is “be original”, “be unique”, “be different”, or “be daring and confrontational” etc. Being unique is a good thing and should be practiced every time, but being wild and behaving differently is another matter. Although there’s some truth to it, I believe there’s always a way around this. It’s ok if you think being controversial is good for you but I’m not comfortable doing it that way you see. I think being mindful of your readers, and writing things for their sake will definitely do.


2. Feed your readers
   It’s not food. Give them a way to subscribe to your blog in one easy click. Set up an RSS feed button. Use FeedBurner. Some people like to read through emails instead of the standard RSS readers. FeedBurner can also handle that.


3. Link to your sources
   If your content was inspired by another work online, or it was written to add to the conversation of the day, link to your source. If you are using somebody else’s information, link to the source. If you feel that others may want to read other related articles, link to the great resources you’ll find or have found. Give your readers additional source of information. Give some link love. Additionally, you may ask your fellow bloggers if they could exchange links with you in your blog roll. The more “inbound-links” you have, the better you’ll be in search engine rankings. It’s an SEO technique which you’ll also find below. Of course, it’s always better to exchange links with blogs within your niche.


4. Search Engine Optimization
   Yep, it’s a whole lot of explaining if you ask me. But basically, SEO (search engine optimization) is meant to make your blog search engine friendly and would rank better than others who are not into SEO. If your blog is search engine optimized, it will be easy for people to Google, Yahoo, or MSN search it. It would take one lengthy post to explain it in detail that even I would find hard to understand but, for your sake, here’s an easy one. Keywords are your friend. Like my point in making a great blog post, find a way to place relevant keywords anywhere along your blog post such as the heading, subheadings, images, bold and quote tags, etc. For a better understanding of SEO try these sources (but please only after you finished reading this post): Problogger SEO, Pronet Advertising SEO, SEOmoz.org, Wikipedia.


5. Send your URL to search engines
   This should have been included in the SEO but I think emphasis must be given to it since it’s one important part of traffic generation and anyone can just easily do it these days with the following: Submit Express, Free Web Submission.


6. Send your URL to Blog Directories
   Blog directories or blog rings, as they are called, are blog communities where you can register your blog and get categorized, tagged, or whatever. They have their own style of classifying and organizing their list of blogs these days. People use these communities to look for blogs that share the same niche as theirs.
   


7. Send your articles to Blog Carnivals
   I haven’t tried it before, but a lot are saying it does generate traffic so I added it here. A blog carnival is a blog community where they collect permalinks to articles submitted by bloggers like us and they publish it on a certain date on a blog who volunteers to host the said carnival. Submit your article to the carnival that best fits your niche. For more info try Blog Carnival FAQ.


8. Use social bookmarking sites
   Ever heard of Del.icio.us, Digg, or StumbleUpon? Nowadays, a lot of internet users are heading to these sites to know what the hottest news is and buzz in the web. There are many social bookmarking sites around but these three are frequently talked about and two of them I use. Get on the front page of these sites and it’s instant traffic for you. Try submitting your article to them via Stumbling, Digging, or “Del.icio.using” (I don’t know how it’s called in del.icio.us) it. Alternatively, you can make it easy for your readers to bookmark your blog by placing social bookmark links after your posts. It’s one way also of saying that you’re “social bookmarking aware” and are asking your readers to share their love by bookmarking your content. Here’s an easy way to setup those social bookmark links: AddThis.com.


9. Comment on other blogs
   Comment on other people’s blogs be they newbies or veterans in the field of blogging. Of course, don’t comment on those who don’t want to receive comments (who doesn’t?). Comment something relevant and not just a simple “hi” or “hello”. You should add to the conversation and hopefully, if people find you useful they might check your blog too; which points me to another must in commenting, drop your link along with your comment. If you don’t comment appropriately, people might just think of you as an opportunist or worst: a splog or a spammer. Also, don’t forget to reply to those who’d comment back on your blog, or ask questions about things, or when they email you.


10. Join communities
    Join forums relevant to your niche. Search engines index their threads so people who are searching for something actually lands inside these sites if their content is relevant. Share in your views and create a footer signature linking to your blog. If you find that one of your posts would help in an ongoing conversation of your fellow forumers, don’t be afraid to drop-in that post’s permalinks URL.

Other tips that I haven’t included in the 10 but are also useful in improving your traffic

• Become a guest blogger. There are blogs looking for guest bloggers all the time, and they usually have high page ranks, which mean more traffic. Contact the blog author or administrator (they always provide contact information, don’t worry) and tell them your interest to become a guest blogger. When you guest blog, you are always free to place your blog/website’s link in your post (the number one reason why you want to guest blog in the first place).
• You can have your blog reviewed, some ask for payment, others for free. I’d go for the free ones. There are blogs who offer free reviews in exchange for something such as a reciprocal review or perhaps a link, others offer reviews as a price in competitions. Choose which one you’d like but it’s always best to get reviewed by those with high page ranks.
• There are other programs that were said to generate traffic like Entrecard, Blog Rush, Blog Explosion, Link2Blogs, etc. They’re free, that’s all I can say since I haven’t given time to explore them yet.

technorati tags: blog traffic, SEO