8 Ways To Optimise Your Blog – Part 1
Everyman and his dog have a blog these days, in fact this amateur past time is giving Andy Warhole’s ‘fifteen minutes of fame’ quote new life. Over night blog stars emerge daily and businesses achieve notoriety through daily posting and crafty integrated SEO. Contrary to popular belief, blogging isn’t a fast way to cash or fame. Most blogs are pretty much ignored both by people and search engines, but with good reason. So how can you make sure your mum isn’t the number 1 and only fan of your blog?
- Use an SEO Friendly CMS
If you aren’t savvy with HTML then you should choose an SEO friendly CMS like WordPress. Some are ‘out of the box’ more SEO friendly than others. For example, Google Blogger for all its simplicity really isn’t SEO friendly unless you know how to configure the main HTML template, and even then ability to manipulate each individual post is seriously lacking. - Share It
Tweet it, Digg it, Stumble Upon it, Technorati it, Reddit it, Delicious it etc etc….NOT EVERY POST THOUGH! Choose what you share and where you share it carefully, Target sharing, and don’t just think flinging it out there through every medium will be effective. Don’t be a spammer be someone who distributes content relevantly. - Don’t Appear Like You Have No Followers Even If You Don’t!
If you aren’t getting any comments then take the facility away for a while until you build traffic. Blogs with no comments look unworthy of a read. - Avoid Advertising – At Least For Now
Don’t plague your pages with advertising until you actually have a following, and even then go easy. There is nothing more off putting than a blog set up with the obvious intention of making adsense money. - Use a Mix of Media
Mix up your posts with pictures, videos, graphs and any other media you can think of. Text post after text post is boring as hell for the reader. Light up your pages with imagery and more. Don’t forget to optimise your images and video content with ALT tags and descriptions. - Personalise The Text
Talk personally to your readers. Don’t try to write like a top journalist unless you are one. Encourage readers to warm to your voice. - Invite Some Guests
Invite guest posters who are already popular in the same niche. By doing this you will attract some of their visitors and add some variety to your blog. - SEO Friendly URLs
Optimise your URLs, don’t use standard post number like /212, use hyphenated URLs and target your keywords – www.myblog.com/I-like-this-url
