So you’re looking to increase the profitability of your blog
for the Christmas period (and beyond). You’ve optimized your AdSense, Chitika
and Affiliate programs, you’ve even written a little seasonal content…. but
there’s one missing element…. Traffic.
Unless you actually have people viewing your blog it is very
difficult to actually earn anything from it.
So how do you drive traffic to your blog?
Why SEO?
When you are looking online for information on a topic where
do you go first?
While I’m sure there will be a variety of answers given to
that question – the majority of average web users would answer with one word –
‘Google’.
As a result – learning how to be indexed and ranked well by
them seems like a no brainer.
Writing for Search Engines and Humans
Some bloggers have a problem with the idea of optimizing a
blog for search engines. They argue that rather than writing for search engines
a blogger’s sole focus should be that they write quality content for humans.
I personally don’t see that writing for humans and search
engines have to be mutually exclusive things – in my opinion both can be
achieved without compromising either.
Some bloggers argue that if you write for humans that SEO
looks after itself. To some extent I agree with that – if you do write quality
content that others like you will find that they link up to your site (a key in
SEO) – however I would argue that incoming links from other sites is just one
part of climbing the rankings in Search Engines (an important part but not the
only one).
There are other factors that come into play also and I
believe that by knowing them and naturally incorporating them into your
blogging you can increase your chances of being found by readers in Google,
Yahoo and MSN.
Of course – some people become a little obsessed with SEO
and forget the human reader, don’t fall for this trap and keep a balanced
approach and you’ll benefit both from traffic from the search engines as well
as a loyal readership who keeps coming back for more quality content.
Basic SEO tips for Bloggers
Before I start - I’ll say that while I do get a lot of
SE traffic that I’m not really an SEO expert (it isn’t what I devote most of my
time to). If you want to read something by someone who has spent a lot more
time and effort on the topic I recommend looking at an e-book by Aaron Wall – SEO Book .
I’ve actually been reading through it in the last few weeks (it’s been on my to
do list for a long time) and have found it really helpful.
SEO experts tend to divide search engine optimization
techniques into off site and on site techniques.
Off Site SEO Techniques
Off site SEO techniques are as the name suggests
factors from outside the site itself (ie from other sites) that impact the
blog’s ranking in search engines. Many of these factors are outside the
blogger’s control – however they are useful to know. The most obvious and
probably most powerful offsite factor are Inbound Links (something
I’ve already referred to above).
It is generally agreed that the links that point to a
website are one of the most powerful way of climbing Search Engines results
pages (in fact many argue it is THE most important factor). – To put it most
simply – every link to your site is seen by the search engines as being a vote
of confidence in your site.
Ideally Speaking – The best inbound links have three
main qualities to them:
they are from higher ranked sites than your own
they are relevant to the topic you are writing about
they link to you using relevant keywords to your
page
Whilst you may not have complete control over who links to
you these are the types of links that you should be dreaming of.
How to generate quality inbound Links?
Of course whilst most of us know this it doesn’t make
getting such links any easier – its in the hands of others in many cases. So
how do you get such links?
Quality Content – There are all kinds of link
generating systems out there but in my opinion the best way to get links to
your blog is to write quality content that people will want to read. You can
solicit links with others or sign up for different link building programs or
even buy text links on other sites but the cheapest and probably safest
approach is to build inbound links in a natural organic way as others link to
your quality content.
Notify Relevant Bloggers of your content – Whilst I
don’t advocate spamming other bloggers and asking for links – I would recommend
that if you write a quality post on a topic that you know will interest another
blogger that it might be worth shooting them a short and polite email letting
them know of your post. Don’t be offended if they don’t link up, but you might
just find that they do and that in addition to the direct traffic that the link
generates that it helps build your own page rank in the search engines.
Directories – Another way to generating inbound links
is to submit your links to directories. I know of webmasters who swear by the
benefits of such a strategy – the first thing that they do when starting a new
site is to do the rounds of directories – submitting links to key pages with
appropriate keywords in the links. There are loads of directories out there –
many of which offer a free submission. Ari Paparo has compiled a list of blog directories that
you might want to start with.
Inter-link your Blogs – Increasingly bloggers are
starting or joining blog networks to enjoy the benefits of multiple sites and
writers working together. One of the advantages of networks of sites is that
they usually link to one another. In doing so you have complete control over
how your sites are linked to from multiple domains. It is worth noting that you
should be careful with this approach – if all your sites are hosted on the one
server many think that Search Engines will work out what you’re doing and the
impact will be lessened.
Buy Links – Many professional web masters have a budget
to purchase links from other highly ranked and and relevant sites. Read On
Buying Text Links.
Swap Links – Similarly many bloggers swap links with
other bloggers. Sometimes this happens pretty naturally (you see someone
linking to you so you link back) but in many cases the links are strategic ones
and formally arranged between site owners. I get daily requests for such
reciprocal links (I rarely act on them). Whilst there is some benefit in such
link swapping I would again advise caution here as many SEO experts believe
that the search engines have methods for tracking such strategies and devaluing
the links. Some try to get around this by doing indirect or triangulated links.
ie instead of site A and B doign a direct swap they involve other sites. So A
links to C in exchange for D (also owned by C) linking to B (also owned by A) –
makes your head hurt doesn’t it!?! There are also a variety of systems around
that say they’ll take care of such interlinking for you – I know many who use Digital Point’s Free C0-Op
Advertising system. Personally I tend to avoid such schemes and have a
policy of linking to sites I think are valuable to my readers. If they link
back then so be it.
If you’re looking for link exchange/buying/selling programs
you might like to look at systems like:
On Site SEO Techniques
Having looked at Offsite Search Engine Optimization
Techniques I’ll now turn my attention to examining some of the factors you
might like to keep in mind as you build your blog – (or Onsite techniques –
things you do on your blog that help build a higher ranking). As with all SEO
techniques there are many of these and a lot of speculation around all of them
so let me touch on as many as I can:
1. Keyword Rich Content – identify a few keywords for
your article that you’re hoping will get indexed highly by Google. Don’t pick
too many but consider the questions
How do I want people to find this post in Search Engines?
What will they type into Google if they want information on
the topic you’re writing?
How would I find information on this topic in the Search
Engines?
What results come up when I do plug these keywords into
Google?
What other keywords are other sites using?
The answer to these questions will give you a hint as to
what words you’ll want to see repeated throughout your article a number of
times.
These keywords will need to be the most common words used in
your article. Use them in some or all of the following ways:
Keywords in post and page titles (read my post on using
keywords in titles)
Keywords in URL of page (blog
herald wrote on this a while back)
Keywords in outbound links.
Of course you should always link
to sources of content as an ethical consideration but the bonus of this is that
many SEO experts think that linking to relevant and quality sites on the same
topic of your post with good keywords can also add credibility to YOUR post
also.
Keywords in bold tags (try do it at least once)
Keywords in heading tags (there is debate over exactly how
to use them but it’s generally accepted that h1 tags are important and that h2,
h3, h4 etc tags also have an impact. Having said that I’ve seen some pages rank
very well in search engines without using heading tags. There are many
tutorials online about heading tags – here’s one.)
Keywords in image alt tags (here’s
how)
Keywords in the general throughout the text of your post –
but especially early on in the first few sentences
Keywords in meta tags (they seem to be less valuable these
days but many still believe they are useful with some search engines – here’s a Guide to meta tags)
Of course you can go over the top with keywords in posts and
let it destroy your content – but if it fits with what you’ve written tweak it
to include the words you are targeting a couple of extra times. Most SEO
experts recommend getting your keyword density up to between 5-20% – I think
20% is probably bordering on massacring your content.
One last word of warning and disclaimer on keyword rich
content (because I can just hear the comments on this post already) – don’t
sacrifice your readers experience of your site just for the sake of SEO. Yes
keyword density can be important in climbing the search engine rankings – but
more important is that your content and design are user friendly and helpful to
readers. There is nothing worse than a site that is stuffed with keywords –
these sites come off as cheap, nasty and spammy – don’t fall for the
temptation.
Keep in mind keywords that might be specific to the season
we are approaching. While during the year there might be less people searching
for posts relating to Christmas, gifts, presents, new year sales etc – this
time of year will see an increase in these types of searches.
2. Themed sites - One of the growing theories of SEO is
that you are more likely to rank well if you have a substantial amount of pages
on a similar theme. ie a niche topic blog will probably rank higher than a
general one that covers many topics. Build a blog with over 200 pages of
content on the same theme and you’ll increase your chances of ranking well as
SEs will see you as an authority on the topic. The take home advice here is to
keep to some kind of a topic/niche/theme for your blog. It is also probably
another argument for categories and tagging posts that relate together
strongly.
3. Site Design – Search Engines like well laid out,
well coded and easily to navigate sites. Make sure your pages validate (I need
to work more on this) and that they are viewable on all major browsers. Search
Engines don’t tend to like too much Flash, Frames or Java Script in your site –
keep it simple and clean and their robots will index your site a lot faster and
more accurately. Also try to keep your blog free from dead links (a challenge
for those of us with older blogs with big archives).
4. Interlink your Site – The way Search Engines index
your blog is to send little robot crawlers to your site to track what you’ve
written and follow the links. Make it easier for them to get around your blog
by using internal linking wisely. Most SEO experts recommend that you provide
some sort of Site Map that means every page on your blog is just a link or two
away from every other one. One way to do this for bloggers is to make sure that
your category pages are in your sidebars as I do in this blog. Also make sure
every page links back to your main page and any other important pages on your
site. If you’re writing on a topic you’ve previously written about consider
linking to what you’ve written before or use a ‘other relevant posts’ feature
at the base of your article. You’ll see in my menus at the top of the page a
number of my key categories and articles. One of the impacts of having them
highlighted in this way is that they have become some of the most highly ranked
pages on ProBlogger simply because they are linked to from every page of this
blog. This is a key point in the lead up to Christmas – if you have a few
seasonal posts that you particularly want to do well in the SE’s make sure they
are linked to from every page on your blog.
5. Update regularly – The more you update your blog the
more often Search Engines will send their crawlers to your site to index it.
This will mean your new articles could appear in the index within days or even hours
rather than weeks. This is a natural benefit of blogging – make the most of it!
6. Outbound Links – There is debate over how SEs treat
outbound links from your blog. I’m in the camp who believe that relevant
outbound links enhance your site’s ranking in search engines. I always link out
to quality relevant sites that I think my readers will find useful and have a
little anecdotal evidence that seems to support the theory that this is healthy
for the way SEs index you (check out Waynes article on
the topic for more info). Linking to sites outside your own blog does mean you
end up sending traffic away from your blog so you need to count the cost of such
a strategy. Note that you should always try to link to reputable and relevant
sites to your own page. Also keep in mind that too many outbound could have
detrimental impact upon your blog. Like in most things in SEO – moderation is
the key.
7. Choose your domain name wisely – there are numerous
factors to keep in mind when selecting a domain name. For one you might like to
include your keyword in it if possible. Secondly you should do a little
research to see if someone else has previously used the domain. This could have
both positive and negative impact. If it was a quality site with inbound links
you might reap some benefits but if it was a banned spam site you could still
be banned from Google for a long time. One service you might want to use to
check expired domains is Way Back
Machine at Archive.org.
8. Register your Domain for a Lengthy Period – a recent
patent by Google indicates that it now looks at the length of your domain’s
registration in ranking it. It does this because many spam sites have short
registrations and a longer one indicates that you’re building a site with
substance and are in it for the long haul.
9. One topic per post – the more tightly focused the
theme of a page the better when Search Engines come to rank it. Sometimes you
might find yourself writing long posts that end up covering a number of
different topics. They might relate loosely but if search engine ranking is
what you’re after it could be better to break up your post into smaller more
focused pieces.
10. Write optimal length posts – there is some thought
going around the Search Engine Optimization community that pages that are too
short can get passed over for high rankings. I try to keep posts at least 250
words. Of course there are some posts on my blogs that are shorter, but if I’m
writing a post that I want to rank well I try to give it some meatiness in
terms of length. On the other hand don’t make it too long either – because in
doing so you make it difficult to keep your keyword density up and could end up
with a less tightly focused page. Research also shows that longer articles can
have a pretty steep drop off rate in readers after the text gets below the
‘fold’ or to the end of the first screen of article (looks like this post is in
trouble – is anyone still reading?).
11. Avoid Duplicate content – Google warns publishers
in its guidelines about having the same content on multiple pages. This goes
for both multiple pages that you own but also pages that others own. This is
because a tactic of spammers is often to reproduce content on many pages and/or
to steel content from other sites. There is some debate over what duplicate
content does and doesn’t include (for instance many bloggers use ‘free
articles’ as content on their blogs – these articles often appear on hundreds
and even thousands of other sites around the web and to me could be seen as
duplicate content) – my advice is to be very careful about how many places your
content appears. I do republish occasional posts (or parts of them) but try not
to do this too much and attempt to add elements that are unique on each
occasion that the posts are republished).
12. Ping – services like Pingomatic (there are numerous others
too) will ping a variety of websites for you to notify them that you’ve
updated. In doing so you’ll also be letting search engines know that you’ve
updated which will trigger their robots to come visit your blog. I’d also
suggest pinging
Google’s blog search tool.
13. Submit your RSS to MyYahoo – submitting your RSS
feed to MyYahoo seems to help with getting indexed on Yahoo. Read more about
this at Getting
Yahoo Traffic for your Blog. Some also think that doing the same thing to Google’s
Personalised pages could have a similar impact.
14. Quantities of Content – I always get into trouble
when I write about having lots of content – but I think its true that bigger
sites tend to rank better than smaller sites – whilst it is possible to rank
highly with a small site – it’s probably not the norm.. Search Engines will see
your site as more comprehensive the more content you have. You also better your
odds of being found in Search Engines if you have more pages. By no means am I
saying just to put up random junk content – be careful about this – rather work
at building a comprehensive and large site over time.
15. Submit to Search Engines – You can do all the best
onsite SEO strategies in the world and still get no where because the Search
Engines have not found you to start with. Each search engine has a way of
letting it know about your site – submit your URL to be included in the index.
Please note that this takes time and perhaps a quicker and more effective way
is to get linked to by a site already indexed by the search engine.
You might also like to tryout some of the services around
that offer to submit your sites to search engines for you – I’d be wary of
paying for this sort of service though. I never have and seem to do ok.
The Time Factor
One more element that I think is often overlooked in SEO
tips posts is that of ‘Time’.
My own experience of blogging is that you can do all of the
above things and still not be ranked well in the Search Engines for months and
months. Here at ProBlogger it actually took around a year before I started to
get significant search engine traffic – despite me doing all the ‘right
things’.
If you’re not ranking well in the search engines – hang in
there. Keep posting, keep working on quality content and keep the above factors
in mind – as you do this you’ll find that in time your SE traffic will
gradually increase.
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