SEO Tips for Blog Posts | SEO for You and Your Blog (not Spot)

SEO Tips for Blog Posts may not be something you search for everyday, but it is indeed something many small businesses are interested in. That’s the reason for this post and I hope you’ll find it useful.

8 SEO Tips for Blog Posts

 

  1. Determine the keywords your post will be focused on.

    When it comes to SEO tips for blog posts, your first and foremost priority is keywords. You already have a topic for your post in mind, so you likely have some ideas for a keywords, however, your first ideas may not be the best. For example, my first idea for this post was not “SEO Tips for Blog Posts,” so you may want to do a little research to understand which keywords are going to get you the most search volume for the lowest amount of competition.You can do that by entering your keyword ideas into the Google AdWords Keywords Tool.

    It’s meant for use with Google AdWords, but it’s also very helpful for SEO research as well.The first (SEO for you and your blog) tool is your friend Google.For example if you’re writing a post about “Search Engine Friendly Blog Posts” search for that keyword term and look at the results.
    Search Engine Optimization for Blog Posts

    What do you notice? The competition looks very high and the keywords aren’t exactly what you’re writing about.If at first you don’t succeed… try again!

    If we look at “SEO for blog posts” instead we see the following:


    SEO Tips for Blog Posts - Keyword Research

    This is starting to look more promising, because we are seeing low competition and high volume.

    Further down in the list we see

    “seo for you” with low competition and search volume of 60,500.

    and

    “seo tips for blogs” with low competition and search volume of 1,300.

    and a combination of these should serve us well, so now we’re ready for Step 2.

  2. Include keywords in your post title/heading.
    Since we found a couple of phrases with low competition and high search volume, we are going to go with “SEO for You and Your Blog | SEO Tips for Blog Posts.”  This allows us to get more volume of searches with “SEO for You” and also target our audience or people who are looking for help writing SEO friendly blog posts, with “SEO Tips for Blogs.”

  3. Search for your title ideas in Google (SEO Tips for Blog Posts) to see what your competition is.
    ReSearch your competition based on the title your have defined to understand what you’re up against. Remember there are no competitors, only teachers.  What do the results you see from this search teach you?

    Search for Your Competition: "SEO Tips for Blog Posts"

  4. Include keywords in hyperlinks in your post.
    Can you link to a related article, video or site using your keywords in a hyperlink?  If so, this will give you a boost in your search rankings.

  5. Include the keyword phrase several times within the post, but no more than 5% of the post.
    Yoast is the best WordPress plugin for SEO for your blog. The plugin will tell you exactly what changes to make in order for each blog post to be SEO friendly.

  6. Make sure the post is 400 – 800 words long
    Too short and there won’t be enough words for the search engine to understand the relevance of the article.  Too long and you will dilute the relationship between your keyword phrase and the rest of your content.  Don’t overload your post with the keyword phrase you have chosen. Just be sure that appears about 5% of the time throughout the content. The Yoast plugin for WordPress tells you exactly how much you are over.

  7. Add alt tags to any images
    These help human visitors understand what each image is if they are viewing with images turned off and/or if they are visually challenged.  Search engine don’t mind if you include keywords in alt tags, but it is best to be as descriptive of the image as possible so that your blog post is most accessible.

  8. Embed videos and/or add links to videos and other related content
    As with any blog post, it’s always good to add value and offer as much as you can to support your idea.  After all, good content is what people like to share and link to and those inbound links are also extremely helpful in SEO and your search engine rankings.

What are your biggest SEO and blog related tips and/or questions?

Evidence of the Long Tail

If you haven’t read The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson, read it.  The book is much more entertaining that the Wikipedia definition.

I was just referred to this blog titled “Social Media Will Change Your Business” from one of my favorite Facebook contacts.  She’s not really a friend and I don’t even remember how I am connected to her, but she posts really great quotes on Facebook and I am inspired daily.  Thank you @claudiaguzman who I just today discovered that you are on Twitter.  I’m really going to enjoy following you on Twitter too.

The blog (and introductory video) mentioned above, was last updated in February 2008.  Yes, that’s a long time ago, but the story was first published in 2005 and the post is still receiving comments.  That’s the power of the long tail.  Post something once and it may just live on forever.  If it’s on the web, people can find it, link to it, share it and help it spread.  This is a great example of that and also the power of crowd sourcing.

What’s your favorite Long Tail story?

WordPress Wickedness

I’ve been making a few updates to my site today and was frustrated by not seeing the changes showing up immediately, in real-time, after saving. This is annoying to me, because I am used to clicking the save button in content management sites where changes are instant. So trial and error is my friend today and if you’re reading this, hopefully my trial and error will save you from having to do it in the future. After an hour or so of investigation, I discovered that if you are saving changes in widgets and/or files in the Appearance editor, the changes don’t show until you have published or updated a blog post. Eureka! So simple right? Right!

Well if you missed it, here it is again: If you are struggling to see a change you made in a widget or on in files in the editor under the Appearance tab, try publishing a new post or even just updating one of your previous posts. Then review the other change you were trying to make. You will see the changes take effect immediately.

For example, I was changing the text in sidebar.php and it wasn’t updating on the live site. Finally after posting something and publishing, the text changes in the sidebar showed. Another issue was that I was trying to format my mailing list sign up widget (a form created with Google Spreadsheets) and it wasn’t letting me control the scrollbars. Update a post and Voila! scrollbars are gone.

This must have something to do with the way WordPress handles posts versus pages. The “save” button in pages and widgets is almost like a save to draft, in that there is a slight delay before you see the changes. Publishing posts seems to publish the whole site, i.e. all changes that have been saved are now published to the LIVE public site.

Another problem solved. Now I just need to remember it for the next time I am making edits to widgets or in the editor. Hopefully this post will joggle my memory and yours.

Have you had any similar experiences with WordPress?

Claiming my Blog on Technorati

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If you have just started a blog it is a good idea to register with Technorati and claim your blog there. A link from Technorati is worth a lot in terms of search engine optimization and when your blog eventually becomes really popular you will show up highly ranked in Technorati’s most popular lists.

The code above is the way Technorati verifies that you own the blog you are claiming to author. They ask you to enter the code into a post so that they can verify it.

My blog is now claimed.

Pay Yourself First

I just learned through Twitter than Jeremiah Owyang is leaving Forrester research. I have admired his tweets and posts over the past several months so I am very interested to learn what he will be up to next. More importantly though, Mr. Owyang is an valuable role model for building your own personal brand even while working at a very well known company in a high profile position.

My favorite quote from the article “Why Jeremiah Oywang Left Forrester Research” is his response about how he works, why he blogs and how he has built his online brand:

“My use of social media and my career advancement are intrinsically tied,” Owyang told us by phone today. “I started my blog as a practitioner at Hitachi. I budget time every morning to read and blog. I do that before I check my personal email or work email. I believe you have to pay yourself first. When you open your email you pay someone else, because it’s usually people reaching out to ask you for something. Taking the time to read blogs, synthesize and add value, that builds your community. That’s paying yourself first.”

Clearly, Jeremiah was making a conscious effort to build his own brand on Twitter and through his Web Strategist blog and Forrester is losing a superstar. He says he is excited to be practicing more about what he knows than analyzing it, so I’m particularly curious to see where he’s going.

The only constant (especially on the web,) is change. This one should be particularly interesting.

Fortune 100 Companies Prefer Twitter Over Facebook

In mid-July I did a series a posts on Facebook or Twitter?. According to yesterday’s eMarketer article: Marketers Embrace Twitter Over Facebook,

“Burson-Marsteller, in a July 2009 study of Fortune 100 companies, found that more companies had a presence on Twitter (54%) than on Facebook (29%). “

eMarketer Chart showing Fortune 100 Companies favoring Twitter

Furthermore when resources are limited in terms of time to spend on various social media channels, 21% of Fortune 100 companies use only one channel and 76% of those companies were likely to use Twitter, with only 14% choosing Facebook and 10 choosing blogging.

Why?

  1. Twitter means business, where Facebook is entertainment.
  2. Twitter is a place to connect around specific topics, where Facebook is a place to connect with friends and family.
  3. Twitter is about following people you respect and being followed by people who respect you. Facebook is about having friends, sharing photos, events and having fun.
  4. The twitter platform enables sharing of good links more freely and with a bigger reach than Facebook. Repeating on (and retweeting) on Twitter is perfectly acceptable and even encouraged, where repeating on Facebook makes your brand across as annoying.
  5. Picture 1

  6. Twitter is faster than blogging
  7. Tweets are more easily digestible than blog posts. Think “byte” sized chunks of valuable information.
  8. Tweeting a link to a blogpost is the norm
  9. Twitter combines the fun of Facebook with the information and knowledge value distributed in blogs.
  10. Twitter is more mobile and easier to do quickly than Facebook and blogging.
  11. Twitter requires more listening than Facebook and blogging and that means the people that embrace the medium are better conversationalists, because dialog means listening and responding.
  12. Twitter is real-time, blogging is as soon as I can get to it and Facebook is whenever.  Time means money and money means business.

A Comparison of Twitter with Blogging

I’m reading “Naked Conversations” by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel as a result of reading “Putting the Public Back into Public Relations” by Brian Solis and Deidre Brekenridge. What is it with dual authors? I guess the “two minds are better than a guru” adage applies with book writing too.

Anyway, “Naked Conversations” is an older book about blogging and while it is old in terms of the fact that blogging has been around for years now, I am enjoying the corollaries that I am finding between blogging and microblogging (and more specifically in my case Twitter, since that’s my microblogging platform of choice.)

On page 28, Naked Conversations talks about Blogging’s Six Pillars (from 2006) and I chuckle as I think about the similarities that Twitter has in 2009:

1. Publishable – “Anyone can publish a blog.” Anyone can tweet.
2. Findable – “Blog posts are search engine friendly.” Twitter posts (tweets) show up on search engines all the time.
3. Social – “The blogosphere is one big conversation.” Twitter is a great conversation starter. Many people think of twitter as a cocktail party where you chat with people who share similar interests. Conversations are short and fun. You converse more with those who you have more in common with.
4. Viral – “Information often spreads faster though blogs than via a news service.” Anyone heard of “Twitter-time?” Some say they get their news from Twitter now instead of any other news service.
5. Syndicatable – “RSS…” Um… RT is the ultimate in syndication and there are all kinds of tools that allow you to syndicate other people’s tweets.
6. Linkable – “Because each blog can link to all others, every blogger has access to millions of other bloggers.” Twitter is all about sharing links and repeating (RT’ing or Retweeting) the links that other people have tweeted. It’s a love fest of links and information on your favorite topic.

Fun isn’t it? Are you tweeting yet?

Blogging and Say(ing) Everything

Today I listened to a great forum discussion about blogging (audio embedded below) with Scott Rosenberg, author and co-founder of Salon.com. Michael Krasny of KQED’s Forum discuss Rosenberg’s most recent book: Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, and Why It Matters

Rosenberg discusses the history of blogging, how it developed as a form, what it is today, the different types of bloggers there are and why it is blogging is the easiest way to self-publish, find a voice and have a voice. I found it interesting that more women are blogging than men and this stems from the fact that blogging is a medium where woman can express themselves more easily. They are less self-conscious and better able to contribute to the community.

The forum asks callers to share their favorite blogs, why they like them and how they use blogging in their daily lives.

Despite the growth in usage of Twitter and social networks like Facebook for sharing your interests with your community, blogging is not going away and remains a way to say everything. Enjoy!

Why Blog?

In his blog post for today, Seth Godin shares four videos about noice, social and decency and in the spirit of group genius, the power of the group and collective insight, Seth encourages his readers to vote for their favorite video. That’s a great way to get fans to watch all four videos, which are all worth the few minutes they take. My favorite since I just finished teaching my Internet Marketing Now: New Tools & Trends class for the summer at SFSU is the “Seth Godin and Tom Peters on Blogging” video embedded below.

Quoting from the video:

“Blogging is free. It doesn’t matter if anyone reads it. What matters is the humility that comes from writing it. What matters is the metacognition of thinking about what you’re going to say. How do you explain yourself […] How do you force yourself to describe in three paragraphs why you did something? How do you respond outloud?

If you’re good at it, some people are going to read it. If you are not good at it and you stick with it, you’ll get good at it. […] Force yourself to become part of the conversation, [because] that posture change, changes an enormous amount.” — Seth Godin

“No single thing in the last 15 years professionally has been more important to my life than blogging.” — Tom Peters, Best Selling Author, Management Visionary

And it is indeed free!