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Dec
12

The ONLY 7 steps to blogging success (seriously)

I must admit that I agree it’s a professional SEO who should do all the work on optimizing a site, but it’s also true that many of them can be done by the site owner itself.

Irrespective of whether he’s a techie or not. Agree or disagree? So you’ve heard all those Jazz and Jargons on SEO, keywords, meta tags, links, H1 tags, density, anchor text and what not? Phew, quite an overload for a newbie or a non-tech site owner. This goes out to all the non SEO educated people who wants to do that 5-10 things that will make their site SEO’d for Google. Just do them and sit back, you don’t want to mess with it anymore. Here goes.


  1. Selecting a keyword

    Selecting a keyword is the first and foremost step to SEO. If you don’t have a keyword ready, you are doing SEO like searching for something in dark. Your keyword forms the vital part of your structure, they are the building blocks, so you got to decide what they are. One important thing to note here is that when selecting a keyword, you got to see how much competition you’ve got already. For a keyword like "Weight loss", there is already immense competition, so unless you have the time and money to fight them, it’s better you dodge them and select a new keyword of your own. For example, if your site is on outsourced jobs, you probably have to narrow it down to "Outsourced jobs India" or to your locale, so that you create a niche of your own. Makes sense right? Ok, now you have one or two keywords ready, and you are sure what search terms on Google do you want your site to rank high for. So let’s move ahead.


  2. URL Structure

    If you are on Wordpress or not, your URL structure should be SEO friendly. When I say SEO friendly, I mean they should be in a presentable form to the Google spiders. Let’s take an example. Non SEO friendly URL – yourdomain.co.uk/82u83nbdfbdfhcat?12hhre SEO friendly URL – yourdomain.co.uk/88e-free-dvd-rentals?12uk As you might have noticed, the second URL carries more information about your website than the first one, which is a more machine friendly one. In wordpress, this is pretty easy to do. While, if your site is on a CMS/coded, like Joomla,Mambo, or PHPbb, V Bulletin etc things can get tricky. There is a solution to each and there is no one rule that goes for all of them.


  3. Onsite content

    Honestly speaking there is quite a lot that goes in here, and it would be difficult for a non-techie to comprehend, hence I’ll talk only about the bare essentials. The textual content on your website (select All, CTRL+A) should be able to give the spiders some information about your site and the products. This is vital. If you can’t do this, then there is a lot you are compromising. So tweak the landing pages textual content so that your keywords are sprinkled evenly. Don’t over do it. A text to keyword ratio of 5-6% is just fine. You can repeat this on all the pages at your site, and make the textual content in them optimize for the keyword. This will help in the overall worthiness of your site. Remember…don’t over do. It may lead to trouble.


  4. Others onsite factors

    I’ve put all the other onsite factors to one category because each of them are not significant on their own but makes an impression when combined with other factors. These are – Image ALT tags – Not really worth, but may help sometimes. Change all the ALT names, descriptions and Titles of your images to a sentence that related to the keyword and the content. You may be easily tempted to stuff all your keywords into them, but that is not good at all. It can harm you if you over do it. H1 Tags Make sure that there are H1 tags in your code, and ensure that your keywords and related clauses are embedded in H1 tags. Spiders pick up content from the H1 tags, and consider them relevant to your site. Again, don’t over do it. STRONG Make sure that you don’t use BOLD element in your HTML instead, either replace them with STRONG or find a work around. BOLD is only visual while keywords in STRONG are absorbed by the spiders. So if you can combine H1 tags and STRONG tags, that is great. If you run into trouble by highlighting unwanted words, use CSS to tweak it and clear the junk out.(Bonus tip ;) ) Footer Text Utilize the footer text, it carries some level of importance on some search engines, because that’s the last thing they see on your site. Make sure that instead of that boring copyright text it’s something related to your keyword that you write. Makes more sense.


  5. Off site factors – Incoming Links

    All of you know that incoming links help much in building your authority. Also I often see lot of wrong ideas floating around regarding link building. Some wrong ideas about link building that I found popular are. – Link exchanges give you authority – NO they don’t. It’s a worthless exercise. – Google Page Rank decides your rank on Google results – NO it doesn’t. I can rank a PR1 website over a PR 5 with less effort for a selected keyword. – If some porn site (bad neighborhood) links to you, you are in trouble – NO it does not. It will not help you and it will not harm you either. – If you get anyone linking to you, it’s good – NO, you should be selective as to who links to you (if at all you decide who links to you). – The more the links the merrier – NO, It’s not the numbers but the quality of the links that matters. More link building tips here.


  6. Sitemaps

    Now, assuming that all the above steps are taken and optimized without overdoing it, you are ready to submit your site to Google. For this create a sitemap. Remember, this is the final step, so you want to go back and make sure that you haven’t done anything wrong like overdoing keyword stuffing.


  7. Promoting your site

    Now that everything is in place, you can start letting the world know that you have a great website. Two simple strategies I’d recommend here are – 1) Submitting to Directories and 2) Submitting to Social bookmarking sites. When submitting to social bookmarking sites, make sure that a powerful user notices your site. And don’t immediately sign up for an ID and submit your site. It doesn’t work that way. I can help you submit your sites, provided they have quality content if you can add me as a friend at my social networks (see right hand panel top). My recommendation is Stumble Upon, it gives you great traffic. I’m not allowed to add any more friends on SU myself, as I’ve reached the 200 limit, but you sure can add me.

So there you have it, the simple 7 steps involved in making your site successful, right from basic SEO to promoting it. If you are comfortable with it, start with Step 1 today and put your site on steroids. Make sure that things are natural and steady any rush can lead to disappointment. If you have any doubts meanwhile, feel free to ask me or hire me if you wish.

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Category: SEO Tips, Wordpress SEO | Author: Mani Karthik
SEO Wordpress Themes
  1. Speed linking this Wednesday : Link attack on fellow bloggers at Tech | Freak , One stop for all your latest technology news and updates

    [...] Mani karthik wrote about wordpress themes and plugins in blogging tips. On his dailyseoblog he writes great article about 7 steps to online success. [...]

  2. Abhijeet MukherjeeNo Gravatar

    Great post mani…it helps to make SEO more understandable to newbies like me…I am going to start a blog soon and keep these points in mind…thanks

    Reply

  3. Monika @ The Writers ManifestoNo Gravatar

    Mani,

    Your post is spot on! I have added you to my favorite links this week as this post is a winner.

    What I love is that is shows step by step on how easy it really is to gain better SE rankings.

    Well done!

    Monika @ The Writers Manifesto’s last blog post..9 More Freelance Writing Job Websites

    Reply

  4. Blog Discoveries Link Juice | TheWritersManifestoBlog

    [...] Karthik of Daily SEO Blog wrote a great post on 7 Steps to Online Success. The post goes into detail on how to optimize your site for Google and shows you step by step on [...]

  5. Rajesh KumarNo Gravatar

    Mani, undoubtedly one of your best posts.

    Reply

  6. Ankit AroraNo Gravatar

    Great post !!
    I particularly liked the idea when you differentiate between SEO friendly and non SEO friendly urls like this:

    Non SEO friendly URL – yourdomain.co.uk/82u83nbdfbdfhcat?12hhre

    SEO friendly URL – yourdomain.co.uk/88e-free-dvd-rentals?12uk

    Thanks !!
    ankit

    Ankit Arora’s last blog post..World’s biggest christmas parade Toronto 2007

    Reply

  7. LakshmiNo Gravatar

    Hi Mani,

    Great article !! keep it up.

    Reply

  8. Mani KarthikNo Gravatar

    Thanks Abhijeet, Monika, Ankit, Rajesh and Lakshmi.

    Thanks for adding me as your friend on SU too. As I said, I cannot add anyone further since I’ve reached the limit.

    Cheers!

    Reply

  9. MohanNo Gravatar

    Excellent Mani! Thanks a lot! A great sum up for a start up SEOer. BTW, added you to Facebook and SU… Are you on Orkut?

    Mohan’s last blog post..Knol… from Google. Art thou game?

    Reply

  10. charlesNo Gravatar

    Great SEO tips man. Thank you for sharing. ;)

    charles’s last blog post..Dinner at Grand Emerald Seafood Garden

    Reply

  11. rogerNo Gravatar

    thanks man, very good info indeed!

    Reply

  12. AShNo Gravatar

    I have another perspective of SEO for your blog. This article might be interesting to you.I have written this article for the bloggers looking for SEO Success.Hope it helps!Cheers

    Reply

  13. MahavirNo Gravatar

    I am currently optimizing website named drugconsult4u.com , your tips will really help me.Thanks

    Reply

  14. DakzNo Gravatar

    Great post mate.. I am currently optimizing mine and will be doing a few more soon. Will def add you..

    Cheers

    Reply

  15. gavaskeeNo Gravatar

    thanks man.
    you are doing lot of spirit of energy.
    Keep it up!

    Help us also “Drupal” on SEO point of view?

    Reply

  16. meet thakkarNo Gravatar

    really informative post….

    keep it up….

    even if u want help contact me.. i will do any job or help for u

    meet.h.thakkar@gmail.com

    Reply

  17. AnkitNo Gravatar

    Hi Mani,
    I forgot the fact that u can’t add anymore friends:-)
    Anywas i have been using SU for sometime now.Though it did get me one or two visitos but then ,it hasn been phenomenal.

    I am already wondering whther the only successful blogs are the ones dealing with webmasters .
    Its strange that when stumbling with Investment,Finance as my intrsts,i haven got any indian site till now.That’s sad:-(

    Reply

  18. Arun Basil LalNo Gravatar

    Hey,

    Thanks for the information, But the link with the Anchor text “More link building tips here. ” reports a 404 error. Fix it before the next Google PR update.. lol

    Reply

  19. shyamNo Gravatar

    This is simply going to encourage many people to come OL and start blogging and give it a best shot.Great post once again.

    Reply

  20. RajeelkpNo Gravatar

    Nice post man ; btw I had sent u a friend request in stumble, plz accept it

    Reply





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Mani Karthik Hi, I'm Mani Karthik, SEO, Blogging & Social Media Enthusiast. I primarily blog about SEO and Social Media on this blog, basically How-to articles and tutorials to help the SEO learner. Feel free to have a look around and drop comments. Hope you enjoy your stay.
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