SEO – Getting The Basics Right On Your Blog
For a blog to be an effective tool, it needs to have, at the very least, a basic SEO program to ensure the search engines index and rank each of the posts published. There are a good many web site owners that do a good job in ensuring their web pages are well optimized, but when it comes to their blogs, they do little apart from worry about keywords.
Keywords mean little if you’re not getting the basics right. For WordPress owners, it is as easy as 1,2 and 3:
- Download a plugin such as All in One SEO Plugin
- Install and activate the plugin
- Use it – the plugin will not do the work for you so when you write a post, scroll down and fill in the details before publishing.
I cannot place enough stress on the third point. The number of blogs that have the plugin installed yet never used amazes me. There are times when bloggers install plugins because ‘they read somewhere they should’, yet never take the time to understand and use those plugins.
There are several different SEO plugins, find one you are comfortable with and use it every time you create a post or page. It is also important to use prior to publishing. If your post is auto-pinged, Twittered or submitted then you want the correct SEO information going with it. Subsequent edits are not always Twittered or submitted.
There are a lot of on-page strategies you can use such as headings for important information, alt tags in images and internal linking using appropriate anchor text. Getting the basic SEO information such as page title, URL, keywords and meta description right is a great start.
When filling in the meta description, include the most appropriate keyword if possible – but remember this is likely to become your mini-sales pitch when the page appears in the search results. Make sure the description is unique and helps to sell the page. The reason you are publishing a post is because you want people to come and visit and read – give them a reason to.
Your web site may be your primary focus and your blog designed to support it. If that is the case, give your blog the best possible chance of helping your web site by ensuring you get at least the basic SEO structure right each and every time you publish a post.
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