Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines
Bloggers who want to drive high traffic to their blog and maintain a successful blog should pay close attention to search engine optimization techniques that can help improve the ranking of their blogs on search engines. Search engines all use a certain type of ranking algorithm that is used to determine the order in which websites are returned when a user searches for information on a particular topic.
However, not all search engines use the same algorithm for this purpose. As a result, there is no simple solution to optimize a blog for high ranking on all search engines. There are a few tips that can be useful with most search engines. These tips include using relevant keywords, generating links to your blogs, and using image tags in a beneficial way.
The importance of keywords. The use of relevant keywords in blog posts is one of the most common and also one of the simplest ways to optimize search engine rankings. However, not all bloggers agree on the best ways to use relevant keywords to optimize search engine rankings. Some bloggers think that keywords should be used often to create high keyword densities while others think that using keywords at densities below 1-3% and keyword placement is the most profitable strategy.
Other bloggers argue that just using relevant keywords as they naturally come into the blog post stream is enough to ensure search engines understand the blog content. Whatever keyword strategy a blogger chooses to use, all bloggers can benefit from searching for relevant keywords. They may have a blog that relates to a general topic like gardening, but may not know the search terms typically used by internet users when searching on that topic.
Fortunately, there are many programs available that generate related keywords for a given period of time, which provides the blogger with other keywords that they should consider embedding in the blog. For the example of a gardening blog, the blogger may want to use additional keywords such as container gardening or home gardening to attract more interest from search engine users. Generate favorable feedback links. Backlinks are also another common factor used in search engine ranking algorithms.
Many search engines consider the number of links to a website as well as the quality of the websites that provide these links. This means that the search engine ranking of the website that points to your blog could influence the weight that the back link contributes to your own ranking. This is because some search engines consider top-ranking websites to be more valuable than other websites that do not rank well and therefore reward websites receiving backlinks from these high-ranking websites quite favorably.
Some search engine algorithms also consider whether return links are reciprocal or non-reciprocal. In these cases, non-reciprocal links are generally considered more valuable than reciprocal links. In addition, backlinks that come from link exchanges or link farms are generally not considered very influential for search engine rankings. How can images improve search engine rankings?
Bloggers should also be aware that all photos used on their blog can be used to improve search engine rankings with certain search engines. This aspect of search engine optimization is often overlooked because many bloggers believe that images are not seen by search engines. Although this is true, search engines explore blog code in addition to blog content.
This means that the search engine will display the information provided in the image tags. Bloggers can take advantage of this by using image tags to provide relevant keywords that can boost search engine rankings. However, care should be taken that the keywords used in these tags also accurately describe the image, as blog visitors will often see the text included in these tags as they scroll through an image on the blog.