Traffic for Your Blog?

Many bloggers are not taking the steps needed to optimize their blogs.

Why optimize your blog?

* Increase rankings of the blog on BOTH regular search engines as well as blog/RSS search engines
* Increase traffic to the blog from multiple sources such as social search and social bookmarking sites


Blog optimization relates to the changes to wording and layout on your blog. This is some of simple guide to optimising your blog for the search engines and building a steady stream of interested visitors.


Find the Right Keywords

The basis of ALL search engine rankings is keywords. Users enter keyphrases in Search Engines to get information they need, It is VERY important that you optimize for such keyphrases.
Use this tool to find related keywords to your main keyword. This will also show you how popular each keyword is.


Check the Placement of your Blogs Keywords

It is vital that your keywords and phrases are prominent. This refers to the placement and format of the keywords.

You should place your main keywords as the titles of a post, this shows search engines that they are the main point of the post and the a degree, the page.

Within reason you should bold, underline, italic and hyperlink your keywords when used in a sentence to build importance. As you develop importance on a keyword throughout your blog, you will build a site-wide theme showing these as the main keywords the search engines understand your site to be about, therefore ranking you higher than other sites which are less optimized.

Write your keywords at the beginning of a sentence and at the end to show it as natural as possible. DO NOT enter your keywords separated only by a comma, it is search engine spamming and you WILL be penalized! The more natural your keywords appear the better the quality of your content.


Socialize your blog

Inbound links are valuable so garner them. Cross link your website and blog. Notify other bloggers about your blog via comments and email. Join the conversation by writing posts that reference other blogs. Become a link hub, an authority site, by making your blog a real resource. You can also ramp up your traffic. Submit your feeds, either by hand or using tools like RSS submit. Make sure pinking is turned on. Claim your feed at Technorati and subscribe to your own feeds. Use My Yahoo and My MSN accounts to submit to these search engines. Track which engines you are listed in.


RSS

Make sure you have RSS available. Many hosted blogging solutions don’t have RSS automatically available, so you will need to add it. And when you do add it, ensure you have those RSS links in an obvious spot. Don’t tuck them away at the very bottom of your index page after your most recent 20 entries, or hide them on a separate About Us page. Place all those handy subscribe links in your sidebar, which is exactly where people will look for them. If you use Feedburner currently, have a look at their new MyBrand option which allows you to host your own feeds for a seamless user experience.


Ping

Ping the major RSS feed and Blog search engines each time you post. This can be configured with blog software such as Movable Type or WordPress to work automatically. If you're using Blogger.com, then you can do this manually with Pingomatic or Pingoat.


Spread the Word

While it may not seem like much, telling people you know can help you build a site. People you know can offer advice on design, topics, etc. and let people they know about your site. People who know you are also far more likely to comment on your postings, making your site look more active, thereby encouraging others to do the same. If you choose to do this step, ask the person to tell 3 other people they know about your site. This will in effect create a small network of people reading and commenting on your site. Plus, if they really like your site they’ll continue to tell others about it.

No matter how many optimization tactics you employ on a blog, there is no substitute for quality content. I admit that.