7 Easy SEO Tips for Bloggers Who Are Allergic to HTML

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Easy SEO tips for Bloggers who aren't web designers.

This post was created for some of our clients who are blogging and needed guidance on how to start to SEO their own posts.  We still may end up going over their posts later, but it's better that they start off on the right foot.  For example, it's easier if they had some keywords in their blog post url from the very beginning, and usually that comes from putting the keywords in the blog post title.

Let's face it, there are bunches of bloggers who've never typed "<A HREF" and who start twitching if the code view accidentally appears.  Nothing wrong with that.  They can still do SEO that will significantly increase their blog traffic.

Here are 5 easy tips for how to make sure real eyeballs look at your amazing blog posts.


1. Use the Right Keywords

SEO is nearly impossible with the wrong keywords.  You may not do super in-depth competitive keyword research but you can at least choose terms people actually search for.  

To find those, use the free wordtracker search.
 

If you want to be sure you're not missing a more popular synonym or make sure you're not targeting a keyword only the 1000 lb gorillas of the web can conquer, you'll need our help with keyword research.  But a quick rule of thumb is try to use keywords (phrases) that contain at least two, if not three words.

In our analyses, the best conversion results have come from relevant keyword phrases containing three or four words.  However, in smaller, low traffic niches, you still may be able to dominate a two word keyphrase.

If you really want to do it yourself and want to get a sense of both demand and competition, buy a subscription to nichebot.com and check your keywords' KEI.

2. Put Keywords Where They Belong, and Don't Spam!

Put your keyword in the

• Title of your post
• Tags/labels
• Body test of your post

Make sure whoever set up your blog has it set so that the title of your blog post is the first thing in the TITLE tag of its webpage.  They should know what that means.  Send them a link to this article.  If you want the title of the blog or site also to be in the TITLE tag, put that after the blog post title.

You don't have to and shouldn't use it more than three times in a post- you want to avoid what's called an "overoptimization penalty", in other words avoid being a keyword spammer.

One other place to put keywords, albeit more general ones: your categories.

3. Use Synonyms and Lateral Keyphrases to Leave a Clear Semantic Footprint

You can and should use synonyms in your post. 

Google uses something called semantic indexing to understand what your page or post is about, so it groups related words and concepts.  

For example, if you write an article about about "online dating", some other highly related keywords include eharmony, personals, singles, match making, dating advice, and soulmates. 

Or for a keyword like "stand up comedy" there are a number of famous comedians' names that are popular searches. 

You might already plany to write about these lateral topics, but making sure you include the words means the search engines definitely get the signal about what semantic space your blog post occupies.

4. Use Keywords to Create Internal Links
 

You'll probably need a list of about 100 keywords guiding you in your blog post writing.  If any of the topics you've already blogged about come up in a new blog post, link to the old post with that other post's main keyword in the anchor text. 

That means use the other keyword and make a link out of that keyword to the other post.

Similarly, link to important pages on your main website.  Whenever you mention one of your products or services in a blog post, turn it into a link to the appropriate page on the main site.

5. Announce Your Posts to the World

When your post is done, do these things:

• Twitterabout it.  You are on twitter aren't you?  Find out why you should twitter.
• Bookmark it in digg, del.icio.us, and niche social sites like sphinn.com or ahlifemed.com; even better, wait to see if twitter or blogger friends submit them first, because then you get more authority and reputation in your industry- it looks better than submitting your own... but if no one will submit yours, go ahead and do it
• Thumbs up it in stumbleupon- your keywords are already in the title, you can copy in some text, choose very general tags- here you SHOULD use one or two word keywords
• Ping your blog to all services with pingmyblog.com

6. Get Social!

Start reading blog posts in your industry, and comment on them- I mean substantial, real comments.  When you comment, use your blog address as the url you're asked for when you post.

This gets you known by both humans and search engine bots.

To find blogs to read and comment on, try the Google Blog Search.

7. Track It!

You are using at least Google Analytics, aren't you?  Maybe your blogging platform has stats.  Watch for more traffic.  See what post topics people like.  Write more about them.