Getting organic traffic to your Blog must be the most important factor for you to consider if you want to make your Blog, a successful one. Many sites offer a good position in Google for some amount. However, I do not think it is worth paying someone for it as you can do it yourself keeping in mind the following tips. I follow the same for my Blog and I get appreciable traffic from organic search. I will also show you how it worked for me.
Difference Between Post Title and Meta Title
I have seen most of the Bloggers using the same title for both the post title and meta title. Post title is the one which is visible to your readers and meta title is the one which is visible to Search Engines. You must use keywords with less competition in both the post title and meta title. Try to keep both titles different but keyword rich. This will bring up your article to the top in search results for keywords used in both titles.
A recent gust post on my Blog was titled “Simple ways to do SEO Quick”. Do you think it is a Search Engine Optimized title? Obviously not. I didn’t mind disturbing the title as it matches with the content and the content was all about SEO basics. Hence I made the title as “4 Simple SEO Tips to Rank Higher in Search results” And the result was like this:
Here you can see that both the post title and meta title are shown in search results. Hence, the keywords used in both the titles would help you rank better.
Selecting the Proper Keywords
I personally do not feel that entering meta keywords helps much. All you must concentrate on is the keyword density. Keyword density is the number of times the keyword is repeated a particular page. You can make use of the Google Adwords tool to select keywords. But if that doesn’t seem to help, you can consider yourself as the person searching on Google and think about what would you type in Google Search to reach the article you want to optimize. Use long term keywords. Consider the same example as mentioned before. This is how I classify keyword for the article:
Bad Keywords: SEO, SEO tips, Search Engine Optimization, Quick SEO
Good Keywords: Rank higher in search results, basic search engine optimization tips, quick seo techniques.
As you can see above, you must always try to use long tail keywords. Try to introduce such keywords in the first 4-5 lines of the post as they are the most important ones. You can enter the same keyword in meta keywords too. The more number of times you repeat the keywords, the better your ranking in search results would be. But this reduces the quality of your post. But it is you who decides whether you write for search engines or for your readers. If you are a really good writer, you might be able to do both 😉
Removing Stop Words from Permalinks
When you write a post, the default permalink is derived from the post title. For the post mentioned above, the permalink would be in the form /simple-ways-to-do-seo-quick/ This permalink is not optimized for Search Engines as it contains stop words like simple, ways, to and do. Almost all words are stop words here. Hence you can remove such stop words for SEO. You can find stop words here. Also see what Matt Cutts thinks as the Best Permalink Structure According To Google’s Eye.
Using Better Image Alt Attribute
This is something which I found most useful. The name of the image and the alt attribute are very important in SEO. A post from my Blog on Google+ had an image with alt attribute “Google plus logo” I have not used this keyword within the article or in the post title, but it got me numerous visits from Search Engines. You can check the screenshots below:
The Webmaster tools shows the Search Impressions and Number of Clicks.
This shows how important alt text is.
Interlinking
Interlinking is also important. I use Insights plugin to interlink my blog’s content. Try not to interlink your blog’s content with words like “here” or “click here”. You must interlink keywords within articles. This tells Google what the linked page is about. Hence the anchor text forms a keyword for the linked page.
A few more tips can be using proper H1, H@ and H3 tags.
Apart from all this, an important factor is the number of pages which have been indexed by Google from your site. You need at least 100 posts on your Blog to rank better in Search results. Original and unique content will also let you rank better. If you publish news, you can also submit your articles to Google News and if it is unique, you can expect thousand of visitors from Google News in a single day 😉
If you find these tips useful, kindly appreciate in comments else feel free to shout at me.
Do you have any tricks or tips for writing comments on blogs? That’s huge for SEO as well.
Hi, you can refer this article mate:
http://hellboundbloggers.com/2011/06/09/be-a-hero-on-blog-commenting/
Does STOP words still have any impact on SEO?
Yes it does have an effect, a minor effect!
Write for people not for search engine.
Perceptions always differ! I have not mentioned that Bloggers must write for search engines and not for people. This post is only for those people who wish to see their articles in the front page in Google search results!
I was not knowing about the image alt tag and diff. btw bad/good keyword selection. Thanks lalit for such a nice article.
Excellent tips lalit Thank god I am using all btw thanks for sharing 🙂
Lalit,
Great information… I am going to implement you ideas now….
Thank You Again for the helpful information…
Cheers
Jessica
Lalit I appreciate the amount of SEO Knowledge you have shared along with Basic Seo Tips and Tricks. I agree long tail keywords are less competitive hence drive targeted traffic towards the website. I think Off Page SEO Efforts reap more favorable benefits.
Yes, keyword density on content and ALT tag for Images are teh most important things i follow
Very nice post, you sum up how to SEO a Blog quite nicely in this article. I will bookmark this page and use it as a checklist for all of my posts.
Wow!! Didn't know. It's true I don't know very much about SEO and I do have a blog but reading this post I realized I didn't pay too much attention to permalinks. I did exactly what you descruibe above. Th epermalinks of my blog are identical to the posts title. Funny, I did not pay too much attention to SEO keywords and SEO in general. I didn't think these things are that improtant. I will take into consideration these aspects too.
Thanks for the tips!
Oana
Hi Lalit! Very nice, usefull and effective ideas to to write quality post and ultimately upgrade our blogs. Thanks Lalit and Paradeep.
nice tips
dont forget headings – H1, H2, H3 that important for SEO I think
Awesome post, Lalit. I didn't know that having a different meta title could benefit your blog like that. I have always used the same title for the post and meta. Thanks for the tip, it's really helpful.:)
What makes an article readable is to tell things properly to its reader and you will find people reading your content with ease. Ans this is what you have done here. I found the article interesting and readable. Nice post!
thanks for sharing these information and congratulations to guest author Lalit for explaining each and every point of proper keywords, image alt attribute and interlinking. 🙂
Great mate
Meta tags and Alt tags matters on page seo
really nice post , People like me need this kind of posts liked it ,
In SEO post title and meta title are important Part . Proper and reach Keyword is very necessary for traffic. Thanks for this valuable post. I really appreciate it……….keep continue
Interesting thing about the alt attribute… didn't thought that its so powerful. Thanks for the article.
NIce article on keywords and meta tags; thanx for sharing
if your blog is self-hosted, only then you can play with meta tags.
Alt tags are must for images
Excellent article. Must read by bloggers who are new and confused with seo facts.. tweeted and fbshared.
Robin.
No doubt in that keywords are play very big role in convert traffic on blog or on site and we can find keywords very easily on Google Adwords really this is very helpful tool if you want to see high number of traffic on your site.
Have to select proper key words with the long term keywords on here. And, it will be more helpful to all the people in the wide 🙂 Thanks a lot for sharing your post on here 🙂
Hi, is there any Insight plugin for blogger instead of Word Press?
You don't have any plugins for Blogger!
So, how to do this for Blogger, appreciate ur helps…
You can refer this post of mine to optimize Blogger post titles http://www.blogotechblog.com/2011/01/optimize-blogger-post-titles-for-better-seo/
For optimizing content, you just need to place keywords appropriately as I have mentioned in the post!