SEO Tips For Blogs Part I

Blogs are great way to add fresh content to an existing website but there are estimated to be around 133 million blogs indexed since 2002 according to Technorati. How can you make your blog stand out from the crowd and start bringing in a decent quantity of traffic? Optimisation for a blog is similar to that of any web site but  some things are particularly effective for blogs.

WordPress

WordPress is the definitive software for writing blogs. There are lots of reason why it is great.

• It is simple to install
• has many plug-ins,
• highly configurable
• has a large user base
• great support.

WordPress Plug-ins

When you have a working blog start by adding useful plug-ins such as the ‘All in One SEO’ Plug-in. This will allow you to create pages with unique titles, meta descriptions and meta keywords as well as friend URLs. It adds title, description and keyword fields to the content editor. It is an essential plugin for any WordPress blog.

Create your own Themes for your Blog

WordPress allows great flexibility in the design of your blog and it is quite straightforward to edit the design of a WordPress theme to make it your own. If you are adding a blog to an existing web-site then you can change the CSS to give it a style which is consistent with your web-site. I would use a content-first layout and modify it to suit your needs.

Keywords in Headings and Titles

Keywords should be used in descriptive titles and headings should be used to make the page easy to scan. Readers do not read blog posts they scan the text and the use of headings and sub headings makes it easier to do this. We looked at  Document structure in a previous post.

Quality Content

The best way to gain a loyal readership is write about something that you know about and to write about it well. When you have decided something to write about stick with it and write regularly. Research what other people are writing about on other blogs and acknowledge them if you use their ideas.

It takes time to build up a readership and the momentum will soon disappear if you don’t keep writing. Many blogs writers start by posting one post a day and then it becomes too much and the post drop off until they are not updated at all.

Internal Linking

Where possible add links to your previous page to pass PageRank to these articles and increase page views. Plugin such as aLinks can be used to link to a specific page when a specific keyword is mentioned in a post.

RSS Feeds to Blog Aggregators

When you have posted a new blog entry, it can automatically notify these website of your latest post. In WordPress a list of Aggregators can be added in the settings/writing. A list of aggregators is written below:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://api.feedster.com/ping.php

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080

http://rpc.newsgator.com

http://rpc.pingomatic.com

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://rpc.pingomatic.com

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://1470.net/api/ping

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://bitacoras.net/ping

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc

http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt

http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/

http://ping.amagle.com/

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc

http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/

http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/

http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.newsgator.com/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php

http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogoole.com/ping/

http://www.blogoon.net/ping/

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1

http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php

http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud

http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2

http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

In Part II we continue the journey into SEO for blogs by looking at social  media, duplicate content.