Was talking to a fellow blogger last day and this topic came up.
Bloggers and SEO – Does it really help ?
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“Being a blogger, what are the things that I can do as a quick SEO tweak ? I don’t want to go digging the code and calculating the density and all that..that’s kinda.. for you geeks”
That’s a nice question I guess. I mean…yea we all know the tips…tricks and all that..but how many bloggers do actually implement them ? How many of you try the basic tweaks at least..hmm that would be interesting to know.
What SEO tweak have you done on your blog ?
What do you think is the best SEO tweak for bloggers ?
I’m all ears.
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Hi, I'm Mani Karthik, Pro Blogger & SEO Consultant from India. I blog, I Tweet, help websites with SEO. Loves working from home office. Quit my day job as SEO consultant 4 years ago, to pursue full time blogging and consultation. Living the dream now.
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well i guess the usual plugins, all in one, headspace
i know its not so much of a trick but keeping the meta tites and descriptions unique.
using google alerts in my own way to find out when i get a mention or a link to my site
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One of the most important ones is getting the title of the post before the blog name, which is the default in WordPress.
I have it hardcoded in my theme, though I believe you do get plugins to do that.
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That’s interesting Vipey. Which plugin/plugins do you use. Im sure you are not using headspace and All in One together.
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I always keep the permalink(Post URL) different from the post title(dafault).
Post title should be interesting and appealing
Post URL should be simple and based on user’s search perspective
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@ Ajay – Thats a common one but effective. Also you might want to make the descriptions and meta data unique. Okay apart from that does anyone do anything particularly for onsite optimization ?
@Prashant, That’s very interesting. So I’d say write the page title for users (or say more inclined to them) and the URL more search engine friendly. Could be a tricky one sometimes is it not?
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Use the simplest minimalistic theme that concentrates on text and content rather than a flashy theme, so that the content gets index well.
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Switch permalink from default number format to one using the post title. Also, I tweak the theme to be as SEO friendly as possible.
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@Mani Karthik
no i use all in one seo, although i have been trying out head space on another blog of mine, still prefer all in one though
in regards to the url structure, a tip for popular and breaking news blogs is to use the option of having a random number at the end of each post, this is something you need to get into google news etc..
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All in on SEO and like you mentioned, page title for users, and the URL more search engine friendly.
it takes a little creativity sometimes, but worth it.
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@Avinash – I agree that a minimalistic theme gives a lot of focus on textual content. In fact they should. But I’m not of the opinion to blindly trust any minimalistic theme. cos there are ones out there that claim to be minimalistic but with a not so friendly layout.
I believe textual content can be given highlight even on a normal theme. Just that you have to make sure the layout has to be great.
@Binny – Yea changing the permalink to %category%posttitle format is probably the most popular one. But I think the page title is more important than this factor these days.Especially when Google declared that they are OK with common dynamic page structures.
@Dennis – I’m wondering if anyone frames the content in a SEO friendly way, beyond that. AllinOne SEO is great for setting things on auto pilot mode.
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@Vipey – I cannot possibly agree with the number thing. Getting into Google News is a completely different chapter. I don’t think you’ll get through just by adding numbers. That’s weird.
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I have a few tricks..
1. Google Alerts for when my posts/photos have been used in other posts…
2. Cross referencing with articles within my own site as well as others. I try to have as many internal linked pages as possible.
Would love to change my URLs to titles of posts, but my blog software either doesn’t allow this or I don’t know how to override default.
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Since I have currently no idea what you’re talking about, I go with what i got. LOL
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Mani,
I think I have done nothing at all in terms of SEO in my blog. (Even though I am a regular reader of this blog).
The reason is that my blog does not have any special niche attached to it . It is a programming-security-design blog, but it usually contains my thoughts about some topics that interests only me.
So I usually do not write posts like “10 best tools for programmers” or things like that. And because of this I think that I do not have any ‘keyword’ that I can associate with my blog. So I don’t know how to do SEO for the blog.
This means that I am getting readers only from other bloggers who link to me.
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@Niyaz – I can’t possibly disagree with you. It all makes sense.
@Jennifer – You might want to also consider adding Google alerts for links to your blogs. But they aren’t SEO tweaks actually. Meanwhile, cross referencing is an excellent way to distribute page rank and increase spidering.
You might want to consider shifting to WP. Life would be easier that way.
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I believed that installing sitemap is the best SEO technique that a blogger or site owner should have
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Definitely All in One SEO is a favourite plugin of mine, and probably the most important while dealing with this topic.
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I’m pretty new to SEO and I don’t have any favorite trick to use but I’m using a Platinum SEO to keep the name of the article different from the page title.
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I don’t have any trick to share but a good advice would be to check Google Webmaster Central to identify any issues with the site/blog and fixing them. Not only does this improve User Experience & Search Bot’s indexation, helps you have a clean site that anyone would love to browse around!
If you have a blog or site that provides some service you might want to optimize your title tag and description tag with phone number which is beneficial if users are using mobile search, could bring you few leads as Google converts them to a dial-able number which when clicked dials to the number directly!
Finally, try to have a catchy title to your posts..no one (atleast me) checks all your content… first impression is best impression..if you have very good title chances are users might read your body content or click the link to read on web….!!
Also, try using Zementa ( http://www.zemanta.com/ ) plugin for WordPress (Hosted & Installed), Blogger! Helps you with adding photos/pictures to your blog post along with related posts from blogosphere. P.S: You might be linking externally to other site with similar content, chances are your blog will be noticed by the blog autthors (pingback & analytics/logs).
Cheers!
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use link-a-dink plugin that links to your posts/homepage whenever a designated keyword phrase is used in a post. I had used it in a niche blog of mine and it was really worth the internal backlinks.
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As of me,i am using a Blogger Blog,so there are not must pluging.i submitted my Blog to many rss directories,here is the list if you dont mind zumou.blogspot.com/2008/10/list-of-rss-directories.html
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Thanks Mani…
Thanks!!
You suggesting ‘adding Google alerts for links to your blogs.” How do I term the alert- is it “link:www.alaivani.com”?
Yes, I have also thought about my blog platform.. it is picked out by my webmaster husband
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That’s right Jennifer. link:www.alaivani.com and select “comprehensive” as the option.
Al the best,
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expect some typos on important keywords, include them in meta tags
howz that ? 
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