If you are new to blogging concept and
SEO in particular, I’ll like to share with you
10 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.
2.Proper Use of Keywords in (<H1>, to <h6>)
The Value of your <H1> – <H6> tags
As most of you savvy bloggers already know heading tags (H1 through to H6) are given more weight by search engines than regular body copy. You also already should know that they should be used wisely to reinforce the page’s overall targeted keywords. That said there are a few basics that you should be aware of before starting to go bonkers with modifying your blog’s CSS Style Sheets.
Learn the “Header” tag’s true value
Today it’s pretty common practice to have theme designers incorporate the header tags within their style sheets. In fact, more often than not, their ideas are on the mark, but with a few simple tweaks, you can out rank and out index your competition. But first, you’ve got to know the value that search engines assign these little bad boys.
- <H1> = Most valuable Tag in the toolbox. Usually used for the title of a blog.
- <H2> = Second most valuable tag. This is usually found in the “Title” of each post.
- <H3> = My H3 tags can be found in the sidebar. They are bold with a little star next to it.
- <H4> = Generally unused but quite valuable and should be used.
- <H5> = Generally unused but still valuable to most search engines
- <H6> = Generally unused and least valuable, but not to be wasted.
3. 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.
4. Anchor Text of Inbound & Outbound Links
What is Anchor Text? It’s the word within a hyperlink. 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)
5. 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.
6. 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 credibility – and some says ‘certain form of connection from biased editors’. Still it’s one of those things that are worth your while.
7. <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)
8.<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?
9. 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.
10. 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.
Finaly
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.
