Join BannerXC Now - Banner Exchange Network

WELCOME

Photobucket
Showing posts with label blog directories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog directories. Show all posts

Friday, January 25, 2008

How To Optimize Your Blog For Search Engines

Many clients ask me how to drive more traffic to their blogs. By now you have probably heard that blogs are an excellent resource to get leads as well as clients for your business. The best way to do that is by creating search engine friendly blog posts that get indexed in search engines. When people search for information on topics you discuss in your blog it appears on the search engine result pages. Potential customers then are able to read what you have to say and get on your mailing list.


So now it all boils down to techniques that help you effectively optimize your blog for search engines. Here are tips and ideas to do just that:


- Create A Keyword Rich Header For Your Blog. The header repeats on all pages on the blog. By making sure that your header contains targeted keywords, you are able to get more of your blog pages indexed in search engines.


- Treat Each Blog Post As A Separate, Optimizable Page. Use the process of search engine optimization on each blog post. This means that you need to create an optimized title for each post, find targeted keywords for each post and weave the keywords into your post's text.


- Make Sure That Each Blog Post's File Name Are Descriptive. Different blogging software behaves differently, but some will call your blog posts 2.html, 3.html, 4.html, etc. As you can see, that is not very descriptive and not particularly helpful to either people or search engines. When you create a post called "How Coaching Helps Business Owners", calling it "how-coaching-helps-business-owners.html" is a much better title than "5.html"


Make sure that your blogging software creates descriptive file names for your blog posts; it is better both for human readers and search engine spiders.


- Get Links Pointing To Your Blog. Quality links to your blog means more blog visitors and higher search engine rankings. Current search engine algorithms value links to your blog, which means that having links pointing to your blog will improve your blog's search engine rankings.


- Get Your Blog Listed in Blog Directories. Blog directories are a great source of getting unidirectional links to your blog. Since blog directory links many times are unidirectional (they link to you, but you don't link back to them), they are great for boosting your search engine rankings. Having many unidirectional links pointing to your web site will improve your search engine rankings.


A blog is an excellent marketing tool, but your blog will not attract more leads and clients for your business if you don't use search engine optimization techniques to optimize your blog and attract targeted search engine traffic to it.


Biana Babinsky shows you how to drive thousands of targeted visitors to your blog in her Step by Step Search Engine Optimization Special Report. Learn more about the report at http://avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zseo

---

Article Sources:

How to Find a Niche For Your Blog

It is important to realize that your choice of a niche can have a significant influence on the success or failure of your new blog.


Deciding on a theme can be a daunting task. What exactly are you going to write about? Your niche needs to be a popular topic that many people are interested in.


If you are going to blog about yourself, then you better have a very interesting life, or you will have difficulty keeping your readers coming back for more. You should choose a topic that will make it comparatively easy to grow your readership and build a strong following.


Since many bloggers write about their favorite subjects, it's not a bad idea to start brainstorming by writing down a list of your hobbies, interests, and any areas of professional expertise. Now try to determine a niche you can target within one of those areas.


Should you blog about automobiles in general, or the latest sports cars? If you choose too narrow a theme then you may struggle to come up with regular, fresh content. And if you choose a topic that's too general your readers may be confused by a jumble of seemingly unrelated posts.


You might consider niches within the following general topic areas which have proven to be popular for blogging:


. Automobiles
. Computers & Information Technology
. Digital Cameras
. Gadgets
. Music
. News
. Photography
. Politics
. Shopping


If you plan to use Pay-Per-Click advertising to get traffic to your blog, then remember also that the hottest topics might have the highest pay-per-click fees.


You can sometimes get great niche ideas by browsing at Blog directories and sites like Google Blog Search: http://blogsearch.google.com


Since it is so time-consuming trying to com up with the 'perfect' niche idea, many bloggers and webmasters have turned to specialized niche discovery tools. I particularly recommend Online Gold Finder and NicheTopics.


With Online Gold Finder you can uncover profitable, undiscovered online markets with just a couple of clicks. Read more about Online Gold Finder at: http://www.moneyforblogging.com/goldfinder.htm


NicheTopics is quite handy in a different way. You get to use some great research that's already been completed by an expert. It is a ready-to-use report on 109 unique, untapped niches. Read more about NicheTopics: http://www.moneyforblogging.com/nichetopics.htm


The tools above are not free but consider for a moment. If you are planning - or would even like - to make some money from your blog, then it will be worthwhile to start off with a well-researched niche.


If a particular tool uncovers a good niche that pays an additional $5 a day, it will pay for itself inside the first month!


Don't forget, it will be very difficult to change the theme and niche of your blog later. So invest some time wisely during your planning stage.


You will be off to a strong start in building a successful blog.


Mike Seddon is a writer, entrepreneur, and webmaster. He is the author of the popular e-book, 'How to Build a Money Making Blog', available from http://www.MoneyForBlogging.com


---

Article Sources: