Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about optimizing your blog to rank high in the Search Engine Results and thus increase overall visibility. Apart from unique contents and site design, it’s one of the most important aspects of blogging.
Basically, what you are trying to achieve here is to figure out On What ‘Keywords’ you want the visitors to find your site and how to optimize the said ‘keywords’ to rank high & relevant in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
Simply put, everything begins with what you have carefully chosen as “Your Keyword“. An example of mine are Blogging Tips for Beginners and Blog for Beginners which currently ranks #2 and #1 respectively.
15 SEO Tips for Beginners
If you are new to blogging concept and SEO in particular, I’ll like to share with you 15 SEO Tips to help improve your site’s ranking in the Search Engine Results, all without the usual jargon.
1. Keywords in <title> tag
One of the most important factor to rank high in your chosen keyword is to have it – your keyword – inside the <title> tag. The <title> tag is what appear in the clickable link on the search engine results page. In what I have came to learn is that what appears in the beginning is more important than what comes next.
To give you an idea, let’s take a look at 2 of my chosen keywords – Blog for Beginners & Blogging Tips for Beginners, as the former appears first follows by the latter, naturally Blog for Beginners appears higher than Blogging Tips for Beginners. However, this may not always be the case as other factors such the competitiveness of the keywords are equally important. What I’m trying to say is that you always put your Primary Keyword first.
Now if you are on WordPress, I’d recommend use of an indispensable Platinum SEO plugin to help you optimize your <title> without messing up your theme code.
2. SEO-Friendly URL
By default, WordPress set the permalink structure as www.domain.com/?p=12 which is a big NO NO for Search Engines Optimization (SEO). It doesn’t actually gives any indication to the robot what the url is all about.
In what I have came to learn, the optimal URL structure, according to Matt Cutt with his SEO tips, would be to use only the post title as part of the URL and don’t include the post date in your URL. Not only it is human-readable, more importantly it gives the maximum SEO benefits. How to Optimize Your URL For Search Engines.
3. Proper Use of Keywords in (<H1>, <H2>, <H3>)
Don’t expect the search engine to figure out which are the headlines – it won’t. Instead, use your keywords in the <H1>, <H2>, and <H3> tags to provide clues to the search engine. A good buddy of mine, PB has revealed The Best SEO Tricks Ever that shows you how to optimize your keywords within those headlines.
4. Keywords in Image <alt> tag
Indeed images speak a thousand words but Search Engine Spiders don’t read images, they only read the <alt> tag which is the textual description of the image. Hence, it is important to always provide a meaningful description of an image with your keyword within the <alt> tag. Why you should care with the image ALT attribute.
5. Anchor Text of Inbound & Outbound Links
What is Anchor Text? It’s the word within a hyperlink. Here’s an example, About Yan Susanto, in which “About Yan Susanto” is the anchor text. Not only it gives your readers an idea of about the content of the page you’re linking to, more importantly it tells search engines what the page is about. Used it wisely, it will boost your rankings in search engines, especially in Google. As a rule of thumbs, avoid using “click here” for an anchor text. (See the outbound links on #2 and #3)
6. Origin of Inbound Links
Besides the anchor text, it is your duty to ensure that the sites that link to you is not from bad neighbourhoods. The theory is that it’s better to have one inbound link from a reputable site (generally speaking, sites with greater Google PR are considered reputable) than to have one hundreds links from untrusted sites. Simply said, who links to you does matter.
It’s also important to note that inbound links from sites of similar niche has far more credibility in the eyes of Search Engine than that of unrelated ones. Where Do You Get The Best Quality Inbound Links?
7. The Power of Internal Linking
One important element of SEO that is often overlooked is Internal Linking which, in layman term, means the process of linking to other pages of your site within your archives. I can’t think of a better way to reactivate and rejuvenate the old and buried posts in your archive than to link them internally in your recent post.
You shouldn’t underestimate the power of internal linking in the distribution of your Page Rank – if any, to your internal pages and in helping to improve your search engine results. Link building is never enough without proper internal linking.
8. Links from Directories
I’m not a fan of free directories as IMO having tons of links from PR0 directories is useless and it can even be regarded as link spamming, but being listed in DMOZ Directory, Yahoo Directory and similar directories will certainly boost for your overall ranking. However, it is almost impossible to get into DMOZ without much of a credibility – and some says ‘certain form of connection from biased editors’. Still it’s one of those things that is worth your while.
9. <Description> metatag
Though metatags are becoming less and less important, there are two metatags that still matter in SEO, these are the <description> and <keywords> metatags. Both are still important from a human and search engine perspective. <Description> metatag is what you use to describe your site. In fact, this description is what the visitors see when your site appears on the search results. How to Create The Perfect Meta Description For Google (& Searchers)
10. <Keywords> metatag
While you are it, fill your <Keywords> tag with relevant keywords. Relevancy here means that every word within <Keywords> metatag must somehow appears somewhere within the body text. If not, it can be penalized for irrelevance and considered bad for your ranking. What’s The Best Keyword Meta Tags Formula?
11. Use of Robots.txt for Duplicate Content
Basically the purpose of creating a robots.txt file is to improve site indexation by telling search engine crawler to only index your content pages and to ignore other pages (i.e. monthly archives, categories folders or your admin files) that you do not want them to appear on the search index because it may lead to duplicate content issue.
If you are using WordPress, Syed Balkhi wrote a must-read Robots.txt Guide for Wordpress – Avoid Duplicate Content.
12. Use of Sitemap
While Robots.txt instructs search engines which parts of your site to exclude from indexing, a Sitemap tells search engines where you’d like them to go. From a search engine perspective, sitemap is useful for better and faster indexing while a plain HTML sitemap with the use of plugin provides ease of navigation for your visitors.
As such, it is not uncommon to have 2 sitemaps of which one is created for human – your visitors and the other for search engine robots.
- For Search Engines – You can create a Google Sitemap online and add your Sitemap to your Google Webmaster account or if you are on WordPress, install Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator which will generate XML-Sitemap supported by most of the search engines.
- For Your Visitors – Clean Archives Reloaded generate a list of your posts sorted by months for better navigation. To see an example, have a look at my archives page.
13. Site Accessibility
Another fundamental yet often neglected factor that might affect your site ranking is the issue of accessibility. Often your site may be unaccessible due to broken links and wrong use of robots.txt that may cause your pages not indexed by Search Engines.
The solution: Broken Link Checker for WordPress will check and detect both internal and outbound links that don’t work and notifies you on the Dashboard of any broken links.
14. Keywords in First Paragraph
Put simply, search engines scan and expect that your first paragraph will contain the important keywords for the article. Make sure your keywords appear in the first paragraph of your content. If you do notice, in the first paragraph of this article, I place two primary keywords, SEO and blogging as part of my keyword optimization.
15. Keywords in Footer
Well, the first impression and the last impression usually makes the most remembered impression. A simple SEO trick of placing a link to your main page with your keyword as an anchor text could have a positive result in your search engine ranking.
Final Say
SEO is never intended to be a one-time effort. No success can be achieved overnight. It takes a lot of patience, commitment and the know-hows to succeed. All the above tips when applied may not push you into #1 but it will surely bring you one step closer to #1.
The key to SEO success is persuading search engines that your site is relevant in any search query. There are no hard and fast rules to SEO, it all boils down to the right mixture of quality content and quality inbound and outbound links with proper keywords optimization.
Good luck with your SEO. If you have any opinions or feedbacks, send them my way. I’m all ears.
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{ 138 comments }
“don’t include the post date in your URL” Well this is the new thing which i learn from this post. I have to dig it out more cos my blog URL include date%month% year.
Shanker Bakshi’s last blog post..UBD 1 Year Anniversary Contest Win a Free Apple iPod
Very true, why do you waste your link for useless date…?
2 great plugins can help you optimize your blog:
1. AllinOneSEO
2. Platinum SEO
With the power of comment back links, you site will easily rank well for a lot of keywords using the method listed here by Yan!
@Shanker Bakshi – Please don’t make any change without proper 301 redirect. Your permalink has to be decided right from the onset. Changing it now may affect your overall site accessibility. I guess you are aware of this, aren’t you pal?
Thanks, I am not much into SEO so plugins that make it easier help. Only problem I am bookmarking wordpress plugins faster than I test them. :)
I also have “bit” broad theme (software and web) so I am mostly getting search traffic on specific software titles I made posts about.
Rarst’s last blog post..5 reasons you should use plain text to save your data
Hey Yan
I really appreciate this post. I learned ALOT of good tips about SEO! I had no idea that there was so much that I didn’t know. I am definitely going to follow your suggestions.
Talk to you soon
T Edwards’s last blog post..The 10 Rules Of Business
Make sure to setup your blog correctly so you don’t have to change anything later. Changing small details will cost you SE positions, especially if you change permalinks. Lots of people make that mistake, so it’s better to go through list like this one and do the optimization the right way at start.
Jamie’s last blog post..Beaded Curtains
All good tips and I do try to follow most of them. I have found that on many an occasion I would like to use more keywords in the title but the only problem is that the title becomes nonsensical. I have found that All In One SEO Pack plugin resolves this and many other issues.
Sire’s last blog post..How To Make A Monthly Income With Your Blog
Great post Yan… Without proper SEO work your website is more then likely going to join the ranks of tumble weed and go unnoticed.
Domain Structure’s last blog post..Google Ad Manager
@Rarst – I hear ya, Rarst. I love plugins too, there were tons of them on my folder before till I learned to separate the need from the unnecessary.
The fact that you getting already getting the most traffic from SE proves that you are doing the right thing.
@T Edwards – First thing first, welcome to this friendly neighbourhood. I last saw you on Suite J’s site. Glad that this article is of any help to you.
If time permits, do drop by again and share what you already know with us.
@Jamie – Appreciate your taking the time to share your thoughts. Welcome!
Hey Yan,
Good post. What I like about it is that you’ve included many of your old post links and that makes it easy to find the information readily in one post. I’ve been more interested in SEO after I wrote my recent 5-part Link Building Strategy Blog series. One of the most interesting change that I personally see in myself is that I have a totally different view of link exchanges. Now I do regular link exchanges on my inside pages with friends and other bloggers. Instead of just asking them if they are interested in such page link exchanges, I check and list their pages url and propose link exchanges with mine also listing the page urls for them to review. Just thought I share it here.
Peter Lee
Yan, nice post here.
Thanks for rating my Platinum SEO plugin highly. I would also like to add that one of the features of Platinum SEO is automatic 301 redirects to new urls, in case of permalink changes. This is not available as an option, but is a default feature.Hence many are not aware of it.
I would also like you to take a look at my Broken links remover plugin for dealing with broken links.
@Rajesh – Oh yes, your plugin is definitely one of the most indispensable plugins for SEO. I’m not aware about 301 redirects though but it surely comes as a nice surprise. This is one of those things I dread the most if you know what I mean.
I’ll checking out the other plugin of yours. Thanks, Ganesh. I’m looking forward to another great plugin from you.
@Domain Structure – Glad you found this article useful. You can’t take away SEO out of the success equation of any blog.
@Sire – Hey, pal. All In One SEO is the predecessor to the new plugin Platinum SEO of which it has more new features i.e. 301 automatic redirects. Are you aware of it?
@Work At Home Ideas – First thing first, I almost lost your comment on my spam folder so pardon me for the late reply. The thing is since the day you made your first comment here, yours will always be akismeted and I need to dig into all those spams and pick it up but thing is much better now since you have the gravatar that I could easily recognize. I would suggest that you contact Akismet to de-spam your url from its database.
Now back to what you have said, coincidentally it’s one of the topic that I’m going to use for my guest post which is now sitting on my draft. It’s the kind ‘natural’ linking we all should practice instead of the usual reciprocal link exchanges.
Anyway, I don’t email anyone asking for the link exchanges. Usually I’m the giving part so if the receiver reciprocate, it’s a bonus. If not, my readers have already benefited from it. However, when someone links back to me, I will make sure that I’ll do the same in return when the opportunity arises.
Great post.
Lot of points covered and nice links included.
I appreciate your efforts in giving us invaluable tips on SEO. I know some of them but not all. It helped me and will strive hard to optimize my blog more.
Thanks,
Nihar
@Yan – No I am not Yan, do I have to do a search for it? ;)
Sire’s last blog post..How To Make A Monthly Income With Your Blog
@Nihar – I appreciate the fact that you, being a better blogger, always have the nicest words for me. Thank you. I’m still learning how to achieve that 900 marks on your subscribers list.
What has worked in your favor the most, if I may ask?
@Sire – The link is within the post, Sire. All In One SEO is good but Platinum is better in my opinion.
Great tips, Yan. :) A lot of bloggers, especially new ones, will find this helpful. I just stumbled it to spread the word about this article.
Lucas’s last blog post..Recycling Blog Posts: A Good Idea?
@Lucas – Thanks for the stumble, Lucas. Appreciate it. You know what, you seem to be able to read my mind. What I’m going to do is exactly what you are talking about on your latest post.
I’m glad you put the tag first… it’s amazing how many sites don’t take advantage of that website element.
Hi Yan,
“…Usually I’m the giving part so if the receiver reciprocate, it’s a bonus.”
It’s good that you are giving more than you received. But as you know in link building I’ve learned that it’s a bad thing to have more outbound links than inbound links. I don’t know of any tool that can tell you your numbers. But I guess you’re confident enough that you will always have more inbound links than outbound links at any given time.
Peter Lee
@Yan -
@Learn SEO – hey Chris, (I hope I get your name right). Thanks for your visit. I’m glad you are sharing your vast knowledge of SEO with our readers.
I remember I stumbled upon your site not too long ago and I say I’ve learned a lot from your site. One of them is how to use Sphinn for any SEO-related articles.
Great tips Yan, I downloaded a few plugins you mentioned.
Keep them coming!
On #6, I have to disagree with you somewhat.
There’s no need to worry about getting low quality inbound links. You will, over time, get links from scrapper sites, questionable blogs and bad neighborhood sites. They’re still anchored links and count for something. Usually not much but something.
Sure, you want to go out and find ways to get high quality anchored links from authority sites but don’t be paranoid about the occasional scrapper or ‘adult’ bookmarking site that happens to link to one of your posts. That won’t hurt your rankings.
Frank C’s last blog post..Blaze Media Pro Software Review
Hi, Yan:
You’re a pretty good writer. Do you freelance? I would love for you to write an article (or two) for me. Send me your rates.
As for SEO, this is an excellent post. Good tips for all bloggers. Some might say just slap the All IN ONE SEO plugin, and forget about it.
But there is more to it than that. Marketing Pilgrim wrote a sweet piece on SEO as it relates to titles.
It covered the 3 different title tags, such as 1.) post title 2.) title tag and 3.) permalink. Up until reading that post, which was last week, i was not hip to all 3. (atleast not by name)
So always loads to learn, in this fantastic world of blogging. Good job on the article.
Missy.
By the way, what is WP HashCash? I see it on the bottom of every post.
@Frank C – Hey, Frank. You have your points. A backlink is a still link. The fact is we cannot control who links to us. I’m merely stating that it’s better to have backlinks from reputable sites than non-reputable ones.
Thank you. I appreciate your input. It has given me a different perspective on the issue.
@Missy – Thanks, Missy for your great comment. I’m more than happy to be able to do something for your site. What exactly are looking for? I mean what kind of topic are we talking about as I can’t be possibly be writing something I know nothing of.
Well, I’m not too sure if I have ever read those articles from Marketing Pilgrim but the name does ring a bell. Anyway, I’ll look for it as SEO has always been my area of interest.
I’m always open to new ideas, be it SEO or blogging in particular so if there is any interesting articles, send them my way.
Cheers.
Yan
I use the combo of Akismet and WP Hash to help me filter spammy comments and it has worked more effectively than Akismet alone.
I thought it was similar to the Paypal plugin, you know the “buy me a beer” one. I see now it is not. LOL.
As for the SEO article on Marketing Pilgrim, below is the link:
http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2008/03/optimize-blog-post-titles.html
It’s a good read. Check it out.
@Yan –
Nope I meant share of my search traffic that’s bigger to specific software titles. Overall my traffic is so far dominated by readers coming from other sites. Some mentions on popular blogs, some blogroll links and lots of my comments around. :)
I implement SEO tricks I read about one by one but it is going to take time to see effect and build good amount of posts.
Rarst’s last blog post..5 reasons you should use plain text to save your data
Interesting article! When I read the title of the article, I was thinking – “There are not 15 tips concerning SEO.” After I read the article, I totally agree with you. You really broke it down for beginners.
Misty Cryer-Davidson’s last blog post..Marketing on the Internet
According to Google Webmaster Guidelines, it’s OK if you keep it under 100 links on any given page.
Peter, I’m using Link Counter Tool to check my outgoing links and internal links and there are tons of others on the net that does the same purpose.
Hope it helps….
Great article Yan,
Loved reading every bit of it :)
Swastik’s last blog post..How do you deal with negative comments on your blog?
I was just wondering, does the sitemap plug-in generate sitemaps with unlimited URLs in it? I’ve not really checked it out and would appreciate some feedback about it. I have seen other generators which only give you a sitemap with 500 or 1,000 URLs and I’m not really liking that. I had to buy an unlimited sitemap generator to use for all my sites. ;)
Lucas’s last blog post..Buying Blog Reviews: Poor Marketing Strategy?
@Shanker Bakshi – Hey, if you are changing from one type of permalink to other.. it would be tough to get back to normal traffic as all older links results in 404. But there is one plugin available for wordpress which you may use to save traffic….
Pavan Kumar’s last blog post..Grade Your Website With Website Grader
@Lucas – Not that I know of but since my blog has less than 100 pages, I worry not about it. One thing is certain though, with the plugin, your page is indexed pretty fast usually within an hour or even less.
@Pavan Kumar – Firstly, thanks for reciprocating my visit. Welcome to thoushallblog.com. Hope you enjoy your stay here.
Now according to Rajesh, the developer, if you are using Platinum SEO, all the 301 redirects will done automatically behind the scene. I haven’t tried out myself as I have came to learn about it not too long ago.
Hope to see more of you around here, Pavan.
I am new to SEO and am trying to find out as much as I can. Lo and behold, I come across your tips. Thanks a lot, these tips will come in very handy.
Wow, this is great information. I had no idea on the date. That was new to me. I struggle with keywords in headers. Thanks for the reminder.
Audrey’s last blog post..Brown Rice and Chicken
@Justin – @Friday Night Links Party – 19 August 2008 | Nihar’s World – these are great tips and you will find them very useful, and specially easy to use.
@Justin & @Audrey – Well, we have to start somewhere when it comes to SEO and take it one step at a time. You simply can’t ignore it…
Thank you for the compliment. I’m glad you guys like the article. Here’s a warm welcome to thoushallblog.com.
i’m glad whenever i come across posts like this one, on seo, which really do make an effort to reach out and communicate to newbies like me. for example, your anchor text example makes simple what a lot of other seo sites pretty much assume their readers will already automatically get, but which i had trouble with at first. so thanks for this post.
@kouji – Well, this is a blog that helps beginners to blog better. I always make it a point to write it with beginners in mind. I’m glad you love it.
For more blogging tips for beginners, please don’t forget to subscribe. It’s just a click away.
another set of addition to my newbie blogging knowledge.. thanks Yan!
Thanks for the post and giving excellent tips. I found every thing in this article which i was looking for. Thanks once again :)
Any’s last blog post..Got Antioxidant Anxiety? Here’s The 10 Highest Antioxidant Foods
Hi yan,
you got an organised piece of post there for SEOs. Well done.
Wei Liang’s last blog post..How I Obtain 76 Backlinks On Google In 1 month – Part 1
You forgot one. Newer sites have a better chance at ranking high for keywords that have less competition. Don’t expect to go to the top of Google for Blog Tips in a couple months.
Brad Blogging.com – Personal Blog Tips And Blog Help’s last blog post..Cloak Any Outbound Links For Better Results
@Wei Liang & @Any – Thanks for the nice compliment and a warm welcome to thoushallblog.com.
@dimaks – No problem, buddy. How are you?
@Brad Blogging.com – Personal Blog Tips And Blog Help – Well, this article is not all about how I got myself into #1. A more competitive keyword like “blogging tips” will not get you into #1 or page one in a matter of months. But then “the how” would a subject too complicated for beginners to comprehend, hence it wasn’t discussed here.
You have your point, Brad and thanks for sharing your thought.
Hi Yan: Very interesting write up. I have been using blogger for my blog and I really have not been much of a fan as far as its ability to allow visitors to navigate through the older posts. Being not much of an IT guy, I have preferred to put in a drop down menu so visitors can easily access older posts. It probably does not do much for SEO but helps visitors. Excellent writing with a breath of fresh air on your part on a much written about topic. Thank you, Sir.
Raj Krishnaswamy’s last blog post..Thermal Spray Gun Maintenance
@Raj Krishnaswamy – I feel ya, Raj. That is why WordPress is far more superior than any other blogging platforms. There aren’t many options you can do SEO-wise to Blogger if you ask me.
By the way, isn’t ‘the article wonder’ running on WordPress? Am I missing something here?
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