The Bloggerpreneur: SEO tips for beginners

SEO or search engine optimization has been a nightmare for non techie bloggers. Majority of my time blogging is being spent learning about SEO instead of writing. At first I have no clue of what is it all about, but after reading and learning from experts, SEO is just plain common sense and simplicity.

Bloggerpreneur Beginners Series

Part 1: What Skills Needed to Become a Professional Blogger?

Part 2: Is blogging right for you?

Part 3: Blogging Terms and Definitions

Part 4: 10 Online Marketing Myths you should know

Part 5: 7 Reasons why Students Should Start Blogging

Part 6: Difference between a blog and a website

Part 7: Things you need to know before you start Blogging

Part 8: Choosing a profitable Blog niche

Part 9: Make a Professional Look for your Blog

Part 10: Sure ways to make a profitable Blog

Part 11: SEO tips for Beginners

Part 12: 8 Blogging Habits to include in your Daily Routine

What is SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or un-paid ("organic") search results.[jargon] In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content, HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Promoting a site to increase the number of backlinks, or inbound links, is another SEO tactic.

The plural of the abbreviation SEO can refer to "search engine optimizers," those who provide SEO service.

[source: wikipedia]

SEO tips for beginners

There are two parts of SEO that you should be aware of. It is called on page and off page optimization.

On page optimization is making sure that your website pages are optimized properly so that search engines know what your pages are about.
Off page optimization is all about getting backlinks to your website from other websites. Backlinks determine how important your website is because search engines perceive backlinks as votes.

1. Add meta tags.

Websites mostly rely on big search engines like google and yahoo for good traffic. And when search spiders come to your website for archiving, they may not pick those keywords, phrases, information from your website if you don't have meta description tags.

A meta description tag is supposed to be a brief and concise summary of your page's content. It is optional you may or you may not add, but I prefer adding them to get better traffic from search engines. How you do it.

Go to your blogger template, look for <head> tag and below it copy and paste the following.

<title>TITLE_OR_NAME_OF_YOUR_WEBSITE</title>
<link href="mailto:YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS_HERE" rev="made"/>
<meta content="ALL_KEYWORDS_HERE_SEPARATED_BY_COMMAS" name="keywords"/>
<meta content="YOUR_NAME_HERE" name="author"/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'>
<meta content="GENERAL_DESCRIPTION_HERE" name="description"/>
</b:if>
<meta content="CHOOSE BELOW" name="ROBOTS"/>

Change the words in capital letters

Replace the words colored in BLUE with your own description
For the words colored in red choose any of the 4 below.

(ex. <meta content="INDEX, NOFOLLOW" name="ROBOTS"/>)

INDEX,FOLLOW Index this page and follow all links.
INDEX,NOFOLLOW Index this page but do not follow or index links on this page.
NOINDEX,FOLLOW Do not index this page but follow all links.
NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW Do not index this page. Do not follow or index links on this page.

2. Image descriptions

Search spiders can only search text and that is why you need to put descriptions on your images so that they can crawl your blogs images. Start your images with an ALT tag, here is an example.

From this

<img border="0" height="352" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCvg2CQUowuQ04mdqzD2a0GA_jMIOT3kQNUfUjFBQWacqRIeBn6m4UYBiREoxqRK_LQacoMlwAA000JcoRFuq2Ho_CwYS_VbVeLHT6c-ItrNXGbPvu2M4BQk1oux8dntq_A9EUcGOupfA/s400/seo+basic.jpg" width="400" />

To this

<img alt="SEO tips for beginners" border="0" height="352" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCvg2CQUowuQ04mdqzD2a0GA_jMIOT3kQNUfUjFBQWacqRIeBn6m4UYBiREoxqRK_LQacoMlwAA000JcoRFuq2Ho_CwYS_VbVeLHT6c-ItrNXGbPvu2M4BQk1oux8dntq_A9EUcGOupfA/s400/seo+basic.jpg" width="400" />

You will notice the words colored in red has been added to the image tag. You just add alt tag and insert a keyword rich description.

3. Keywords

You should be conscious of placing appropriate keywords to your titles, content, URL and image description. Make sure it is related to your blogs content and you don't overuse it. Use tools like Google Adwords to search for appropriate keywords for your site, remember to select keywords with low competitions for you to rank better on search engines.

4. Internal linking

You should consistently link back to your past articles, use tools like linkwithin or nrelate for related post results. The more relevant words point to a page, the more likely that page is to appear in search results when users run a query with those terms.

5. Submit to search engines

Submitting your site to search engines will help you get indexed. But do not use auto submission service or a submission software it could get you penalized or banned. Here is the link to submit your site on Google http://blogsearch.google.com/ping?hl=en

6. Find and fix broken links

A broken link is a hyperlink which does not take you to the required page when you click it. Sometimes these links produces errors in your browser. If you have a lot of link errors you will rank poorly on search engines, so I suggests fixing your links even just once every month.

7. Create a sitemap

Adding a site map -- a page listing and linking to all the other major pages on your site -- makes it easier for spiders to search your site.

8. Updated content

Updating your content regularly will help you increase search engine rankings. High quality articles are rewarded highly by Google, avoid copy pasting other articles it will not help you and you will be penalized by most search engines.

9. Social media marketing

Most people are on social networking sites like facebook and twitter, if you post your articles on those websites it will help increase traffic. Just be careful and avoid spamming or else you will get banned. Make sure you are posting your links professionally.

10. Keep it simple

To rank highly on search engine all you need is plain common sense. Avoid copying other articles, make sure your site loads fast, avoid unnecessary graphics and it must be user friendly.

11. Meta tags in a single post

Before, putting meta tags in a single post is a lot of work. But now blogger make it easier by putting search description in your blog post. If you are going to create a new post, take a look on the right side and enter the description of your blog post.

The Bloggerpreneur

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SEO tips for beginners