Millions of blogs, and only the top 10 results. It seems like a recipe for headaches and back pain. If you don’t mind, I’ll see if I can give you some pain medication in the form of tried and true methods for getting your blog to show up in those top 10 results.
1. If you are using WordPress, start by installing the all in one seo pack. You can specify unique titles and descriptions for each post using the all in one. The reason you want to have unique titles and descriptions is so that single posts show up easier for long tail keywords, which sometimes bring in visitors or clients 6 months down the road. It’s always nice to be there for an obscure search term, so you can beat out your competitors who aren’t showing up for that term.
2. Headlines: Should be no more than 60 characters, How to’s and top 5 or 10 lists usually work the best to bring in readers. It is also easy to digg a “How To List” or “Top 10 list”. If your keywords are “Internet Business” or “Movie Critiques”, an example could be “The top 5 movie critiques for online shoppers.”
3. Text: Make your paragraphs no more than 6-7 sentences. Lists and bullet points are easier on the eyes and help people read your whole post. Obviously your keywords are an important consideration, have your keyword research handy when writing any post. First and foremost is your reader though, so don’t sacrifice semantics/readability for your keywords.
4. Links: Link to influential blogs or sources as much as possible (no more than 8 links in one post though, you don’t want the reader to get all confused by the abundance of outbound links). There are at least two reasons for this: 1) If you link to an influential blogger, they will see your link, and possibly reciprocate one back to you if your article is good enough. 2) Trusted sources are worth their weight in gold if you want to be seen as an industry expert and to keep your readers coming back for more.
5. Ultimately you will want people to read what you write on your blog. That’s why we have to prepare your blog in such a way that the search engines will find it easier. There are ways to get immediate traffic to your site using Stumbleupon or Digg or some other social bookmarking service, which we use extensively. But the real value in having your post or article go “viral” is for the links that almost automatically come from people who like what you have written. Relevant, keyword targeted text links from a high profile blog or site counts alot towards how well you rank for a particular keyword phrase. Use Stumbling and Digging as much as needed, but first write good content, and make your site search engine friendly.
6. Last but not least, make your RSS feed readily available at the top of your page somewhere. That is usually the first place people look for an RSS feed if they like your post, and if someone wants to link to you or a post of yours, you should give them as many options as possible to do so. An RSS feed is great for publishing content that will then get read and possibly linked to more often.
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