Whether you like it or not, search engine optimization for most bloggers is one of the most significant sources of traffic. When you approach it the right way, traffic from natural search will feel like a bonus.
If you want to build a successful blog with real solid content, one that people would link to voluntarily, you should take the whitehat SEO path.
Some people argue that it can be hard to determine between whitehat SEO or blackhat SEO.
They are right, sometimes there is only a thin line that separates them both. Search engine
algorithms change on a regular basis and no where we could find complete information about what are considered totally whitehat SEO.
After all, despite SEO may not be a rocket science, still a lot of Phd’s are working in Google and other search engines as well. That sounds as complex as rocket science already to me.
It is important to realize that search engines — or Google in this particular case — like to return relevant search results for their users.
That means webmasters or bloggers who create content that the audience wants to read or consume naturally should rank higher. Often they are not, that’s why you need promotion, besides search engines are working on it too.
In other words, despite how complex it may sound, you don’t need to be a master of SEO to be able to start enjoying traffic from those search engines.
If you stick to the basic principles, chances are better that you will be ranked on top of the search engine result pages (SERPs) and be there longer than if you try to be tricky.
Successful sites and blogs rely on many other factors, which will be covered partially in this concise guide. Most important of all is the blog’s audience.
If you stumble upon a blog while searching the Web, you not only want great information, but also information that answers the question you have in mind when typing your keyword into the search engine.
Besides that, you also want to be able to navigate and find the related information quickly and easily. That depends on good linking structure and design. So those two things matter as well.
There are certainly more than those points, but they should get across the idea why you should pay attention to the other blog building activities too as they are closely related to search engine optimization.
What comprises the preliminary steps?
Keyword research. While it is nice to be able to rank first on any keyword in a week, most likely that won’t happen. Not only because SEO takes time, but also because the competitiveness of the keyword. Keyword research is about identifying the keyword phrases your target market uses to find information or product. With proper research, you’ll be able to find the long tail keywords, which have lower search volume but easier to rank.
They are often more targeted too. Model your blog content around that approach.
Competitive analysis. This involves looking at the search result and determine why pages that are in the top 10 are there.
Although you can’t possibly reverse engineer the algorithms entirely, current SEO allows you to do half-scientific guess of what’s going on. When you are on this, also take notes on the marketing and monetization models of each of the top blogs or sites.
Crawlable content structure.
Blog software makes this very easy and automatic. However, it is also necessary that you compartmentalize your content into multiple categories, or use core pages that represent main categories of the blog. You may divide content into tiered structure or use links to channel your linkage to a set of core pages.
Indexable content. Text is still the most indexable type of content. If you’d like your image to be found for specific keyword search, make sure you use the alt attribute accordingly when inserting image on your blog. Include transcript or summary of audio and video content if you post it on your blog. Use Flash sparingly.
Professional design. You don’t have to hire a professional blog designer if you don’t want to. A professional design means it is able to convey your brand and message. If you choose to use a free blog theme, at least modify it a bit to avoid looking like another blog. Make sure the blog theme designer knows about search engine optimization though, so your template uses the right html tags.
Branding. If possible, you want a domain name that automatically conveys your business or contains a keyword phrase. That helps a bit in SEO but also get across your business immediately your audience see it. Don’t sweat it though. Google is not searchengine.com but Google still makes it to the top in the search engine industry.
Promote Your Blog and ContentAn engine without fuel is just like a lump of metal. While it is possible to build audience slowly just with superb content, your effort won’t be optimal.
There are successful bloggers who raise to the top not because of their content. They write average content but they expose themselves to the right audience.
With millions of blogs online, you have no choice but to make your blog and content stand out from the crowd.
The only way to do that is through promotion.
When it comes to promotion, a lot of bloggers hold themselves back because they think they have to pitch something. Instead of chasing your target audience you could make them come to you by providing informative substance. That’s what I call educational marketing.
An interesting thing about this is because you are already content producer, you will be able to leverage your content.
For instance, offer to be a guest blogger on other people’s blogs. Make use of what you know to gain audience. It is so easy because you are just like stealing traffic from other established blogs.
From the search engine standpoint, promotion is done to get a network of inbound links pointing back to your blog pages.
With the right anchor text in the links, search engines do their magic to determine the rankings of your pages, along with the on-page optimization and other factors.
