Basic SEO elements for bloggers

Posted on August 4, 2009 by timethief

I’ve had this post on the back burner while coping with several unexpected events in my life that required attention.

It seems that it was a good thing that I did because Tim Grice has published a post called SEO Content Writing – How To Produce Great Content That Increases Rank that ties in perfectly with this one.

1. Keywords in <title>

Your title should succinctly state what the contents of the post are. Clever and catchy titles may bring an flush of traffic but they do not continue to deliver readers who are specifically searching for the content that your post has. Use a keyword or keyword phrase as close to the start of the title as possible. Also use them in sub-titles found throughout the blog post. If you need some guidance then check out Writing effective blog headlines.

Take a look at the title tags on your pages, are they targeted towards your chosen keywords? Are they relevant to the pages they are situated on? If not now’s the time to change them. Take into account the keyword prominence … Tim Grice in 15 Ways To Enhance Your Sites SEO Today

2. Keywords in headings <H3>, <H4>, etc.

Using keywords in headings is advisable provided the text does pertain to the the particular keyword used.

3. Keywords at the beginning

Search engines put more weight on the earliest words on a page, so if your keywords are near the start of the page title you are more likely to rank well. Potential readers scanning search result pages see the words found at the beginning first, so if your keywords are positioned at the start of your listing your page is more likely to get clicked on.

4. Keywords in anchor texts

Establishing your credibility around a specific topic with your readers by engaging in ethical practice and linking is important. Anchoring links with your targeted keyword text us very important. If your linking to authoritative posts within your niche you should anchor those links with your chosen keywords. Search engines view the keyword in the anchor text in a link from another site as getting a vote from this site and also for the weight of the specific keyword.You ought to be linking to authoritative posts in your niche and using the correct anchor text in your posts, rather than “click here”.

5. Keywords in <alt> tags

The Google crawler cannot read image scripts and therefore using the ALT attribute (providing a description) will allow you to tell the crawler what the image is referring to. If you want your images to be indexed by the search spiders then give your images the full treatment (TITLE tag, ALT tag Description).

6. Keywords in the body

From a SEO perspective keywords or keyword phrases can be used throughout the post. However, take note that Google will penalize those who resort to keyword stuffing that diverges from natural flow of the text. From the readers perspective, keep it natural and use key words or keyword phrases only if it’s a natural “fit”.

7. Unique content that’s frequently updated

Original content (relevant content, that differs from the content on other sites both in wording and topics) is a real boost for your blog’s rankings, and frequent changes are favored as they bring search engine attention. Aim to constantly add new content and only make small updates to existing content. Do not create 404s (page not found)

8. Site Accessibility

If the site or any pages on it are inaccessible because of broken links, 404 errors, password-protected areas and other reasons, then the site can’t be indexed. See: WordPress: How to Maintain and Track Links

9. Sitemap

It is important to get a Google webmasters account and generate and submit an up-to-date sitemap. Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.