Blog Search Engine Optimization
This is the forth post in the series of posts regarding to “How to Create a Powerful Blog” topic. I’ve already show you why you should use a WordPress, how to get a domain name for your blog and how to get quality hosting for your blog. Now, I’m going to help you to understand and improve your blog SEO to get more quality visitors from main search engines on the world like Google, Yahoo! or Bing (formerly known as Windows Live and MSN Search).
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume of quality traffic to a website or a blog through search engines. This technique can target different kinds of search like Image Search, local search and most popular – content search. Making your blog SEO-friendly can get you many quality visitors from the main search engines on the internet.
Main Search Engine Optimization Facts
There’re several main SEO facts that every blogger and webmaster should include into their own sites or blogs.
- Meta Tags – Meta tags are one of the most popular factors for the SEO. Including description and keyword meta tags for each page your site have. Basically, the more quality and related description or keyword meta tags you have, the more quality visitors you may get from the search engines.
- Page Titles – Page titles are very popular for the SEO of your pages. These titles must be descriptive, related and easy-to understand for anyone to be most effective.
- Other Facts – There’re many other factors and facts that can improve your overall SEO rating. Like Canonical URL’s, Search Engine Friendly URL and more…
SEO Meta Tags
Such meta-tags are usually placed in the <head> section of every website or a web document. These tags are used to specify page description, keyword and other metadata elements and attributes. Of course, the most popular and most effective meta tags are related to description and keywords.
Description Tag
Description tag specifies that the page should be recognized and served as HTTP header (text or html). This is the typical use of this tag which most search engines read and recognize as description. The value in this field will be displayed on the search engine result pages, like it’s shown on below image:
DESCRIPTION SL
Syntax for the description meta tag is:
<meta name="keywords" content="wikipedia,encyclopedia" />
Keyword Tag
The keyword element identifies itself as containing the “keywords” relevant to the document. You should use only related keywords for your own articles to get the best possible effect with this tag. Anyway, I strongly recommend you to use this for any page and article on your site.
Syntax for the keyword meta tag is:
<meta name="keywords" content="keyword 1, keyword 2" />
You can notice that keywords are separated by the comma. You can use multiple keywords for the same post or article on your blog or a website.
SEO Page Titles
Page titles are extremely useful and important for every website or a blog. The syntax is placed under the <head> section of every website or a blog. It help search engine to find and post the most related results in own search engine result pages. The “live” example is provided below:
TITLE SL
Syntax for the title tag is:
<title>your page title</title>
This value is displayed also in the browser title area and also on the search engine result pages. All popular search engines on the internet can successfully read and recognize all above mentioned tags. It’s important to keep your titles useful, helpful and strongly related to the content on that specific page.
Dynamic SEO Tags and Titles
Of course, the best effect you’ll get if you use an dynamic SEO tags for each page on your blog or a website. Luckily, there’re many opportunities to do that, for most Content Management Systems and blogging systems too.
I’ve created two specially SEO oriented and free e-book guides which you can download below. I know that some information on the e-book for Blogger/Blogspot might be a little outdated, but I’m sure that they’ll work for you.
- SEO For Blogger/Blogspot – A complete SEO beginners guide for the Blogger.com or Blogspot.com users. Note that you can’t do anything more with it because it’s a free-hosted blogging solution.
- WordPress SEO Guide – Another SEO-related free e-book from me. You’ll find the all necessary information you’ll need to optimize your WordPress powered blog for the first time. Also, there’re listed some quality SEO plug-ins that you can download and install for free to automate whole SEO process for your blog.
For other CMS systems you might search on their own plug-in or extension public database. All popular Content Management Systems have already SEO-related plug-ins available for free.
SEO Friendly and Canonical URL’s
There’re a lot of opinions about SEO-friendly URL’s. The modern search engines actually doesn’t care so much about SEO-friendly URL’s like they do before. They’re capable to read and recognize other meta and title tags instead and display the most appropriate information for most related customers.
Anyway, I do recommend you to change your own URL’s to look more professionally. It’s much better to have a user-friendly and SEO-friendly URL than not.
Non-Friendly URL looks like: http://www.bashbosh.com/?p=284767
SEO and User-Friendly URL looks like: http://www.bashbosh.com/post-title/
I’m sure that you can see the above difference. It’s nice, Search Engine likes it and it looks easier to understand for the real-humans – we can say that it looks much more professional for sure.
Canonical URL Tag
On the other hand, Canonical URL’s are the specific meta tags and relatively new technique on the internet. Gives you the new URL standard normalization. This new tag is supported by all popular search engines.
To help you understand the concept better, I’ve found these really useful articles where you can read more useful information about Canonical URL’s:
- What’s a Canonical URL @ Mr. Javo
- Specify your Canonical @ Official Google Webmaster Blog
- Canonicalization @ Matt Cutts Blog
I’m hope that you’ve understand the SEO concept. Improve and boost your SEO ranking and improve the ranks and traffic from the main search engines on the internet. It’s for sure, one of the best possible promotional techniques you can do completely for free!
On the next post in the “How to Create a Powerful Blog” post series, I’ll try to help you to create a powerful article on your blog that can attract more visitors from all sources.
This was the forth post regarding to “How to Create a Powerful Blog” post series. Previously, we’ve show you how to choose a Web Hosting for your blog or a website. Next post is all about how to create a powerful article for your blog.
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