As I surf the blogosphere I read many articles related to either SEO or SMO (social media optimization). At times it seems that if you optimize one, the other suffers. If you try to optimize for both the end result is a poor compromise. I don’t believe this is true. You can optimize for both if you plan and work to that plan.
I think the biggest problem I see in optimizing blogs, be it for SEO, SMO, traffic or, as I have written in the past few days, for speed – most bloggers work in an adhoc way. As you read the tips to improve your blog, you see something you like and the first impulse is, oh, I like that, I will give it a try. Read another blog – oh I like that too, I will give that a try. The end result is a lot of hit and miss attempts. As an aside, I also see this with advertising. You see something you like and sign up and put it on your blog. Before you know it you have all sorts of ads running.
The answer is to plan. Surf the blogosphere, read tips to improve your blog, observe their sites and make notes of what appeals to you, what you think is within your capabilities. Once you have collected some of the information, plan on how you are going to implement it.
The first part of planning is to understand what results you are looking for. If you are looking to increase your PR – look for information related to that topic. If you are looking to increase your traffic and reader base, then look for information related to social media optimization.
Let’s look at SEO. A lot has been written about Keywords and the effect they can have on search engines. Finding keywords are only the tip of the iceberg. You can have the very best keywords and yet the effect on your search engine ranking is zero. I use the following as kewords:
radical reviews, blog optimization, radical blogs, radical blogger,
radical blog reviews, blog review catalog, tips to improve your blog,
tips to improve wordpress, wordpress reviews, wordpress optimization,
wordpress sidebar tips
If you do a google search on these keywords you will find that the number of results returned are quite low – that does give me a good chance of getting to the first page – and I have on a couple of them. However, think about it – look at those keywords. There are some there that hardly anyone would type into a search – yet there are up 500,000 results for them. So tip one:
Tip 1: Choose keywords and keyword phrases that are relevant to your site. Steer clear of single word keywords where ever possible – try to select phrases. Always do a search on the word or phrase before selecting it as a keyword – if it returns millions of results, forget it. When selecting keywords and particularly keyword phrases – make sure they are phrases that you could use frequently within articles. Once you have selected your keywords and inserted them into the META tags, make sure you also submit to the search engines.
Tip 2: Having selected your keywords, USE THEM. You will notice that so far I haven’t used any of those keywords – or have I – in fact I have used everyone of them at least once so far, and one phrase at least three times. When you read tips to improve your blog you will notice the writers often highlight words (there is that keyword phrase repeated again). These are often their keywords. So be sure to use your keywords in your articles. Highlight them. If possible include them in the title. You don’t need to use all of them but over a period of time, get them into your articles.
Tip 3: Social Media – hang on – this is SEO isn’t it. I said you can combine them. Submit your articles to your favorite social media sites. Be sure when submitting that you use the keywords from your list that you have created and used in the article.
Tip 4: Find like minded bloggers and link your keywords to their articles. Build a relationship with other bloggers where you swap links, not in your blogroll, but within the articles. Also ensure that links are from article to article – not article to front page.
Thats keyword optimization for SEO using social media and related blogs.
Tomorrow I will look at Social Media, how it can increase traffic and at the same time, hook into SEO.
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