10 ways to optimise your blog

If you want to start blogging but are overwhelmed by the reams of information out there, don’t worry, this post will outline how to start optimizing your blog in easy to follow steps. I have divided them into two sections – on page and off page optimization.

A. On page optimization – all the changes you can make on the webpage.

1. Domain name
Before you register your domain name, make sure it has the keywords you want to optimize for. For example if you want to make a blog about traveling for students, make sure the URL is “travellingstudents.com” or “students-traveling.com” instead of “Destinations”.

2. Decide on a theme
There are a lot of blogs out there and you have to make your blog attractive to visitors. Do some research and see what other blogs are talking about and if there is a niche area that bloggers are not writing about.
Write about a topic you are interested in and that you can add value to. For example, there are a lot of blogs about seo but there is not as much about mobile seo. I have a keen interest in emerging platforms and therefore have written posts about new mobile phones hitting the market place and mobile seo.

3. Decide on your key words
If you are writing a post about seo or mobile soe, you must concentrate on a few keywords which you will base your post around. Use Google keyword tool to find out the volume and competition for particular terms. There may be a lot of competition for term “mobile phones” but may not be as much for “mobile seo”.

4. Blog often
Now that you have set up your blog, update it frequently. If you regularly add new posts your readers will notice that you have a lot of content and come back for more. If you just add a couple of posts and leave it for a few months, visitors will realize you are not adding any interesting content and your followers will leave. You should try and write and new post at least 3 times a week, which is

5. Optimise your images
A picture paints a thousand words. It is important to put keywords in the alt tags. With wordpress, you can add a title and a caption to the image. The captions will appear below the image and will make the page look more attractive. While the title will be scanned by bots crawling through the site.

2. Off page optimization – attracting visitors to your blog.
Now that you have optimised the copy on the blog, you need to attract traffic to your site. Here are a few tips.

6. Submit your blog to directories and search engines
Submit your site to all the major search engines, such as google, yahoo, bing, even AOL and ASK. I would also recommend submitting the site to blog directories.

I have taken this step and submitted my blog with a description and keywords to the following:

http://www.blogarama.com

http://www.britblog.com/

http://www.bloggapedia.com

www.blogcatalog.com

http://www.bloggingfusion.com/

http://www.ukblogdirectory.co.uk

http://blogville.us

You will often be asked to write keywords or push terms for your blog and also a description as the one below.
seojoblogs is a one stop site for all your seo needs covering mobile seo, link building, article writing and keyword research. Seojoblogs prides itself on making seo easy to learn and helping all those new to this field to start implementing seo as business as usual.

7. Guest blog
This involves writing posts on other people’s websites with a link back to yours. Obviously this will only work if you have a written a good post with attractive content and relevant content.

8. Networking
Go back to basics and start networking. Go to the blogging events, the marketing and seo shows and remember to bring your business cards. Talk to people in your field and let them know what you are doing.
9. Start using social media.

If you have a blog that you update regularly, then start using a twitter account with links back to your site. Make sure your blog has an RSS feed so people will be informed when you next update your blog.

10. Take part in forums
If you want people to find your blog, start connecting with other bloggers on line. Take part in forums. UK Yahoo answers has a lot of visits and a lot of people who come and ask questions, so you could be the answer they are looking for.

Putting it into practice

My last post was about link building. Now that I have transferred my blog to my new domain name www.seojoblogs.com, I decided to start my link building campaign.

The first step I took was to submit my site to blog directories.

I found these quite quickly, by simply typing into google “seo blogs submit” There is a lot of choice but I decided to just submit to those that have a page rank of 5/10 and above.  I also avoided those where I had to pay a submission fee. You should not have to pay to submit your blog.

The sites I was most interested in and may appeal to some of you who are starting their own blogs was:

Blogcatalog
Bloghub
Blogdigger

Twitter

Twitter is a micro-blogging site which has taken off in the UK since March 2009 but has been around since 2006.

It allows you to stay in touch with all friend and family in real time.  You can leave “tweets” which are short messages, no longer than 140 characters anytime.  Some say Twitter is the SMS of the internet.  You will begin to have “followers” who are updated with your tweets.

“Should I join Twitter?” I hear you say.  Well it is free and easy to set up like any social networking site. Only join it if you have the time to update your “tweets” and if you have interesting messages to leave.  However, celebrities who have also been bitten by the Twitter bug often leave just random comments.  Stephen Fry and Lily Allen are just two of the many celebrities who have joined Twitter and who have a lot of followers.

Here are a few reasons to use Twitter:

1. Push traffic to a site.
You can use Twitter to drive traffic to your site or your friend’s websites. Post a link on your page and start discussing it with other friends and you will notice an increase of visitors.

2. Network
You can meet many people in the same industry using Twitter. You can start following other twitter people and vice versa.

3. Friends
You can also meet people on twitter who have similar interests, and you can even make friends.

4.Work
Twitter can be used to find work and also freelancers to work with you.

So you never know what is out there till you try. Go on, get your twit pic today.

Links

The importance of links.

It is very important to have good quality links coming to the site.  Links are essential in SEO, bots and crawlers check the incoming and outgoing links to our site.  The crawlers rank how important this links are and if they are relevant to your site.
There are lots of directories and blog articles where the website can be submitted to. With genuine content, you will be able to generate links with other website and blohs. If you link to other sites then they will link back to us and our page rank number will increase.

Link Building methods
Links should be built from a variety of places
-    Web directories such as dmoz.org or business.come
-    Seo press releases
-    Blogs and blog comments
-    Any other of your other websites (eg parent company)
-    Social booking like de.licio.us, Digg
-    Niche websites in our area
-    Affiliates

•    Search Engine and Directory Submissions
This is an important step in link building process.
You should not submit to all search engines, this is a timely and costly process (some require a submission fee).  Alternatively, you could submit the site to webdirectories – global and local depending on your target audience.
You should submit your site to the Yahoo directory and the open directory http://www.dmoz.org/. Once submitted, the search engines should fine your site within 2 or 3 months.
Alternative free directories
www.splut.com (directory of UK websites)
www.thefreewebsitedirectory.com
www.worldwidewub.org
www.wowdirectory.com
•    Online press releases
Press releases can also be an effective way of promoting your website and increasing traffic and awareness of the site. This is also a good way to build inbound links to the online community.
•    Blogging
Blogging is a very important way to upload fresh content to the website
It also provides an area where you or your company can communite with its customers.  There are a lot of free blogging software.  One that I am using now is wordpress!!
•    Social media
This is a growing factor in helping promote websites, facebook, linked in and social bookmarketing sites such as de.li.cious, digg and stumbleupon. These sites can help in building back links, articles about your site and as a result increasing traffic to the site.
•    Internal Site Linking

This is also an important aspect of link building but is often overlooked.  Internal keyword navigation is an important party of search engine algorithm.  Some sites may have very few internal links.
•    Link scouting
It is important to research sites that could provide a potential link to your website.  This means a lot of work should be done into the competitor link campaign and web searches to find potential sites for us.

I bet you didn’t think I could write some much about link building!

Social networking site

They seem to have sprung up all around us and now the internet is flooded with them. What is a social networking site (SNS)?

Well they are an internet based service that allows users to create profiles about themselves and interact with other people on the site. In short, they are a way to communicate with friends and family on line. You can post photos and videos of and share them.

One of the most popular sites for University students and those in full time employment is facebook.  Since infiltrating the UK market in February 2007, it has grown to over 175 million active users. MySpace users are a younger profile, mostly aged from 14 to 18 years old who are still at school or college. MySpace has been used by many people in the music industry to promote themselves, Lily Allen found fame through MySpace.  She now uses another social networking site as well called Twitter.  Many celebrities are using this site which is third position behind MySpace and facebook.  Users can update their own blog with “tweets” , posts of up to 140 characters and you can subscribe to be part of their updates.

You don’t need to put all your information on these social networking sites as this can lead to identity theft.  It is recommended to set your profile to private so that only your friends who you know can see your photos.  And be careful when updating your profile, don’t do it during work hours especially with comments such as “I am bored” or “I have such a bad hangover”.   Your boss could be reading this and decide to show you the door. Be careful when changing your relationship status as these appear on the home page feed of facebook and people may be rushing round to congratulate or commiserate you.

The best thing about SNSs is to have fun, share photos and videos and don’t take it too seriously.