Beginner’s SEO from a Beginner!
Recently I’ve taken an active interest in SEO. Even though I’m still fairly new to the ins and outs of search engine optimization, I’ve come to realize that its pointless pursuing any sort of online business venture without some knowledge of SEO. Keeyit left a comment on my previous post entitled ‘Picking a Good Key Phrase is not Enough‘, where she asks about keywords and tags in post’s, and this post is my answer.
When you start your blog or site, there will come a time when you’ll want to get your name out there and make yourself known. There are a few options that you can pursue without spending any money, and some of those option include:
- Exchanging links with other bloggers in your niche.
- Exchanging reviews with other bloggers in your niche.
- Becoming active in your social networks of choice (mybloglog, spicypage, stumbleupon, etc).
- Leaving a lot of useful comments on established blogs.
- Checking out some traffic exchange programs (blogmad is my favorite).
- And guest blogging.
But if you’re like me and you’ve decided to shy away from SEO, don’t get too comfortable, because if you’re really serious about blogging you’ll have to learn about it at some point. What better time to start then right now.
SEO is the art of attracting search engine traffic. There are a host of established search engines out there, and a whole lot more little ones. Each search engine has a different or varied set of rules that need to be applied for optimization, but since google is the master I’ll major on that. The reason why SEO is so important is because its the only real natural traffic that you’ll get, all the other forms of traffic generation are a bit like forced traffic, if you stop putting in the effort, you stop getting the traffic, but with SEO the traffic comes naturally without much effort on your part.
Right so what do you need? A lot more than this post can explain, but I’ll give it a bash.
- Do your keyword research before starting your blog. There are some great tools out there for keyword research such as wordtracker, seobook’s free tool, and google trends. If you want to learn more about how to use these tools I suggest you check out the 30 day challenge. Pick 3 to 5 key phrases that you want to optimize for.
- Starting small is sometimes the better option, so if you’re new don’t go for phrases like ‘make money online’, pick key phrases that get less searches but also have much less competition.
- Choose a blog title and description that uses your key phrase. For example, if your key phrase is ‘beer belly’ then your blog title might be ‘beer belly challenge’, and your description would obviously include the key phrase as well.
- I’ve heard that meta tags are out, but I don’t see the harm in using them just in case. If you want a proper explanation of meta tags check out ‘how to use html meta tags‘.
- Use your key phrase as much as possible in your content. Don’t go overboard, but if you can get away with using your keyword or phrase without sounding too desperate, then go for it.
- Try to get as many incoming links as possible with your key phrase as the anchor text. So if your key phrase is ‘beer belly’, then every incoming link using ‘beer belly’ as the text is good.
- Whenever possible, link to old posts.
If you put a little effort and concentrate on some of these things you should see results fairly soon. But remember, I’m not an expert so don’t hesitate to keep on learning, one resource that is often recommended is the ‘Seo Book’ by Aaron Wall, which comes with free lifetime updates. Can’t wait to get my hands on it.
Have fun.
Simon
If you like this post consider subscribing to my full RSS feed.
If this is your first time here, you might want to subscribe to my full RSS feed, and don't forget to check out my latest tweets.
