How blogs can be optimized for search engines.
January 10, 2005 
Blogs are becoming more and more popular.
Two nationwide telephone surveys conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project show following growth:
Source: The state of blogging
The main highlights are:
- 8 million American adults say they have created blogs;
- blog readership jumped 58% in 2004 and now stands at 27% of internet users;
- 5% of internet users say they use RSS aggregators or XML readers to get the news and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as it is posted online;
- and 12% of internet users have posted comments or other material on blogs.
There's also some great demographics about blog creators. The report is only 4 pages, but very interesting stuff.
You can read it here: The state of blogging
Now, what can you do with that information?
Well, if you don't have your own blog you better start one right now.
And if you are a blog creator you better score as high as possible in the search engines so you can attract part of this fast growing community to your blog. That's what this issue is all about.
Enjoy.
Case
Blogs and Search Engines
Blogs are indexed fast by search engines.
Opinions about the reasons why vary at the moment but I compare blogs with websites and blog posts with webpages.
So, in order to score high in the search engines, this is what you should do.
1. Optimize your blog post.
Every blog post has to be about one and only one (sub)topic. In that post you should target only one keyword and repeat that keyword several times in the body. You can sprinkle a secondary keyword throughout the text as well, but focus on your primary one.
Also that keyword should definitely be in the title of your post. And if you use headers, put it in there too.
When writing your posts you always want to present valuable information to your readers while at the same time you want to satisfy the search engines for a certain keyword. Many blog posts are a personal opinion written from the heart, so sometimes that's a dilemma. Here's a little trick I use.
I just write my post in a text editor (I use Textpad, easy to use, fast splitting of wrapped lines). I then save the post on my hard disk and fire up my tiny little free Keyword Extractor. That tool immediately shows you which words you have used most. And that will often help to decide which keywords to use.
On the other hand, written from the heart is often what searches want to find. So don't overdo it. Use this as a tool.
2. Use links in your blogs.
If you use a link in your post, add your primary keyword to the anchor text.
You can also turn that the other way around. See if you can find a valuable link for your primary keyword and then link to it. Here's why.
By their nature, blogs actually are simple text content directories. The blog software only let's you manage that content. Since most blog posts use text links the anchor text is very important. That's why you should include your keywords in them.
3. Very carefully select your blog categories.
This strongly depends on the blogging software you use, but at some point your posts will get archived into categories. This is a very powerful feature, because it's like having a subdirectory or a subdomain on your website containing text about the same (sub)topic. You therefore should select your categories carefully.
They should be closely related to eachother. There's a natural tendency to keep adding categories as you write new posts about other topics, but don't go overboard. It's sometimes better to start a new blog than keep adding categories.
4. Define your blog theme.
This is a bit vague, because it shouldn't be too broad or too narrow. It's very difficult to outline the borders here, but you can use the number of categories as a rule of thumb.
You see, you can't cover all topics in one blog. So if you're about to add a new category that is somewhat unrelated, think about it. Maybe it's just better to start a new blog.
5. Link your blog to your websites v.v.
People often forget that it's the linking that makes the Internet work. Linking all your sites, even the free ones, together can boost your link popularity. Since blogs are a lot of fun you sometimes forget to link to and from them. Don't let this happen to you.
There's an interesting article about Business Blogs As A Powerful Linking Strategy at SEO Chat.
At the bottom of every page on www.AnOwnSite.com you can see the sites I operate. And yes, they link to eachother.
Also do not forget to link from your blog to some important pages of your own site containing valuable information. Blogging is quite anonymous and that's certainly the case with the feeds involved. You don't know who's reading your post in a feed reader. When you have links in it pointing to your site that can boost your traffic!
6. Make comments in other blogs
Since blogs and blog posts are picked up really fast by search engines you can profit from this by adding your comments to other people's blogs. It's the natural way of exchanging links in the blog world.
Posting useful and relevant comments frequently also brands you as an expert!
7. Provoke comments
Blogs are great to express personal opinions. As long as you do not bash anyone and keep everything decent you can write provoking posts to stimulate your readers to post their feelings.
Another way to achieve that is just ask. How about this one: Are Free Traffic Exchanges Valuable?
As stated above, blogs by nature are just text content directories.
Posts are often about only one detail of a topic. A lot of text, less HTML and no fancy gimmicks. And for the most part the links from and to such posts are natural, sincere and very relevant.
Combine that with the frequently changing content and there you may have the reason that search engines love blogs and index them fast.
So, what are you waiting for. Get your own blog.
Post often and use the guidelines above to optimize them.
That's it for today.
Wish you success.
Case Stevens
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