7 Easy Steps To A Well-Optimized Blog

Blogging is fast becoming one of the most effective forms of sharing information on the internet.  Because of the unique structure of blogs, search engines find them easy to read and index.  By “pinging” (also known as “knocking”) the search engines every time you make a new post, you’re inviting them to take a look at your new and fresh content. 

Take these steps to properly optimize your blog and its posts, you can begin to rank and conversely gain traffic relatively quickly.

 1.           Build your blog on a subdomain.  Because subdomains have the advantage of being instantly associated with an aged domain that (hopefully) has page rank on it – your blog posts will quickly begin to gain position in the search engine results.

2.           Optimize your post titles with good keyword phrases.  Using a good keyword phrase in your blog posts helps the search engines determine relevance.  For some types of blog software, the post title becomes the page title – this is extremely valuable real estate and should be used wisely.

3.           Utilize plug-ins to assist you with optimizing your posts.  Currently there is a wide variety of platform-specific plug-ins available to help you optimize your blog posts.  Use a plug-in to add a meta description and keywords to your post, and if possible a unique title tag.

4.           Take advantage of slugs.  No – not the slimy garden creature - some blogging software (Wordpress is what we primarily use) will allow the blogger to set a unique “post slug.”  A post slug takes a dynamically named post URL and inserts a compelling keyword in the title.

i.e.

http://blog.mydomain.com?p=12 becomes http://blog.mydomain.com/Optimizing-your-blog/2/21/2007 or something very similar – depending upon your chosen blogging platform.

5.           Set up Pingbacks.  Within your blogging software there should be the ability to set your site up to “ping” the search engines when you add content.  This invites them to come take a look at the information you’ve added and facilitates search engine spidering of your blog.  Some platforms have this feature “built in” so you don’t need to make any adjustments – just be sure it’s on and included in your blog set-up.

6.           Submit to blog directories.  There are a ton of them out there.  Submit your blog to various directories (a lot of these are free or very inexpensive) and also don’t forget about your RSS feeds.  You can submit your RSS feeds to a wide variety of directories.  Do a simple query for “RSS feed directory” and get to work.

7.           Blog frequently to add fresh content to your site.  The more you blog – the better and more powerful it becomes.  If you want to create a successful blog – you need to commit to adding content at least three times a week.

 Taking just a few minutes to consider some basic optimization techniques and add a few very simple plug-ins to your blog will pay off ten-fold in the future.  Set yourself and your blog up for success and you will have a great time watching it grow.