Blogs need SEO too

Paul Stamatiou recently posted on search engine optimization 101. He talks about some basic search engine optimization (SEO) techniques and how he used them on his blog to improve his traffic. A lot of bloggers don't care about SEO, most likely because it has a bad reputation. Well, SEO doesn't have to be shady; it can actually be a very important factor when it comes to maximizing the traffic to your blog. And of course, what blogger doesn't love more traffic?

I haven't been linked by any major sites today and am already at 2,300 unique which is unusually high for this time (4pm). If this trend continues I might beat my own record for traffic last month; 138k page views and 74k unique.

A bloggers primary focus is to write good content for their readers. In many cases you want to increase your readership, which can be done through many different means. One of these is through getting traffic from search engines. You may be already getting traffic from Google, Yahoo, MSN or any other major search engine, but have you optimized your blog to maximize your search engine traffic?

Here are the most common mistakes that I see on blogs:

  1. Most blogs do not have meta description tags. You can find a plugin for your blogging platform that will easily add it to each post. You can setup the meta description tag to automatically pull the first sentence from your blog post.
  2. The URL strings on many blogs are dynamic instead of static. You do not want extraneous characters in your blog.
    http://www.pronetadvertising.com/looking%20forward?to@!the231lit.html
    You want clean URLs like this
    http://www.pronetadvertising.com/articles/looking-forward-to-the-little-man.html
  3. Most blogs state their name in the title tag and then the title of the post.
    PaulStamatiou.com - Search Engine Optimization 101
    The two should be reversed.
    Search Engine Optimization 101 - PaulStamatiou.com

These tips might increase your search engine traffic slight or more drastically depending on a whole lot of other factors, but when you are trying to increase your readership, every little bit of traffic counts. Give them a try on your blog, you don't have much to lose.

Enjoy the post? Here are some more that may interest you.

SES

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Reader Comments (5)

Michael Simmons, July 5, 2006

Great tips. The third one is an eye opener. I've never thought about proper titles.

Neil Patel, July 5, 2006

Thanks Michael.

Dr. Mohamed Taher, July 5, 2006

Hi Neil I am back at your blog. I thank you for your useful comment at my blog. Also, I wish SEO's get a booster from my other post, just-in-case they know that they are more imp in some corners (which they may not imagine). See my post on changes in library user behavior: Searching is Polarized; Will The Five Laws Get a New Revised Version: Every Search Engine its Searcher http://lit2542006.blogspot.com/2006/06/searching-is-polarized-will-five-laws.html

greg, July 6, 2006

"...most likely because it has a bad reputation."

I don't believe that SEO has a bad rep. Often times when people don't understand something they fear it, or even go so far as to vilify it. Quite frankly, anybody with an online presence not practicing SEO is foolish. SEO best practices go hand in hand with proper web development.

Neil Patel, July 6, 2006

Hey Greg,
I think you are right, a lot people who think badly of SEO do not understand it. Or at least that is what I get when I talk to those people.