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If you’re a blogger, by now you have already found out that the majority of your blog’s traffic comes from search engines and social media & bookmarking sites. There is a lot of information available on any of these two traffic sources to help you get started in either optimization you choose to make, although I would suggest you do both, to diversify your incoming traffic.

I know that for many start-up bloggers, the blogs they manage are probably the first contact they had with a website from the role of an administrator, and surely the first contact they had with the concept of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). In terms of blog optimization, I have shared with you a few articles in the past that offer a good range of blog SEO tips, so, in case you need to refresh your memory, feel free to go through them again.

The problem is that even with the available information, those new to the concept of SEO tend to try anything and everything, without taking the time to decide what’s best and what could actually damage their rankings. In what follows I’m going to present a list of the top SEO mistakes you must avoid.

SEO Mistake #1 – Ignoring Basic Search Engine Guidelines

From my point of view, this is the biggest mistake a SEO beginner could make. SEO is a set of actions meant to improve search engine rankings, so the most important thing would obviously be to first check out the targeted search engines’ quality and submission guidelines. Here are the links to the guides of two of the most important search engines, Google and Yahoo:

• Google SEO & Quality Guidelines
• Yahoo SEO Guidelines

Any further SEO actions you take should abide by the above guidelines. After all, is their “approval” you’re seeking.

SEO Mistake #2 – Not Having a Keywords Strategy

There is one common mistake that people do and it’s about the way they understand the concept of using keywords. Keywords are not what you would want you’re website to be found for, but what your website could show up for in relation to its content.

I’ve seen hundreds of websites with that keywords META filled with the most incredible and unrelated words and phrases, most times on the homepage. It’s a mistake to target numerous keywords and actually diminishing that chances to succeed with either one of them.

The development of a keyword strategy is done in strong relationship with your blog’s structure. Just like your blog’s homepage is a gateway to more detailed content topics, so should be its keywords and the keywords of its subpages, categories and posts. Focus on choosing keywords that go hand in hand with the actual content and topics you approach rather than keywords that you’d think might be representative.

Work from your homepage downward in your blog structure, going from more general keywords, to very specific keywords as you get to the posts, like in the diagram below:

Here are 3 past articles you might find useful when it comes to developing and maintaining a keyword strategy:

• How to check and improve your WordPress SEO
• Using Keywords for Blog Optimization
• Advantages of Long Tail Keywords Optimization

SEO Mistake #3 – Ignoring the title tags (H1, H2, H3, H4…)

When writing and publishing blog posts, many ignore these HTML heading tags. You’ve probably seen that I use them in most of my posts, and not only for optimization reasons. They also help your readers better follow the post’s structure and ideas.

Use appropriate keywords inside these tags. The search engine bots give special attention to these headings and continue to “read” your content based on the information found inside them. It builds up relevancy.

Also, a look at how your theme uses heading tags, SEO wise, would do good too.

SEO Mistake #4 – Too much focus on one of the optimization elements

Due to not filtering the incoming information on SEO, some people make the mistake on focusing too much on optimizing the meta tags, or the titles, or the body text of posts. Optimization is a process that should cover all aspects in a very close relationship.

Once you’ve decided which keywords to use, make sure you optimize your page title, META’s, subheading, body text, links, alternate (ALT) text on images and so on. The more consistent the whole page looks in terms of optimization, the better the chances of a higher ranking.

SEO Mistake #5 – SEO is Not a One Time Process

No Sir, it’s not! It’s a matter of trial and error, of research and observation of evolution. Don’t make the mistake of resting at peace once you’ve finished optimizing a page or website. Check the results from time to time, adjust your keyword strategy if necessary. You don’t have to do this only because search engines change algorithms. You have to do it also because you’re definitely not the only one targeting those keywords, assuming you’re targeting competitive ones – otherwise, what’s the point?

Research -> Analize -> Experiment. It’s the only path to success, in any field.

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Back in 2005, the folks at Google took on an “experiment” that later proved to be a very popular tool for webmasters and SEO people: the Google Sitemaps. Their exact words on the official Google blog were:

We’re undertaking an experiment called Google Sitemaps that will either fail miserably, or succeed beyond our wildest dreams, in making the web better for webmasters and users alike.

Ever since sitemaps where added, the Google Webmaster Tools became more and more used and useful, many new features being added over the time.

How do sitemaps help you?

Based on the main reasons that lead to this successful “experiment”, sitemaps are meant to improve the way your website is indexed and crawled by the GoogleBot.

Furthermore, through the Webmaster Tools interface and using sitemaps, you have access to vital information such as pages that could not be crawled, broken links, search queries that returned your website’s content, queries that drove traffic to your website and many more features worth discovering and using.

How do I build a XML sitemap?

As a blogger, you should not worry about that. Arne Brachhold developed a wonderful WordPress plugin that is very easy to manage and automatically generates a standards-compliant XML sitemap based on your blog’s structure. This is one plugin that I include in every WordPress blog I create or administrate, so, from my point of view, it’s one that I “could not live without”, so I highly recommend it.

Download Google XML Sitemaps Generator Plugin here.

Once you have the sitemap ready, it’s time to upload it to your Google Webmaster Tools account. In order to access these tools, all you need is a Google account. You can use your Gmail login info to access them.

Google Webmaster Tools

As soon as you log in to your account you’ll be taken to your dashboard. Here you can select through already existing website profiles, add new ones, add sitemaps and confirm your administrative rights (verify) for those websites.

Once you’ve added a new profile using the form on the top of the table – as indicated in the above screenshot – it’s time to verify your site. In the table, you’ll see your new website with two links beside it. One to add a sitemap and one to verify it. Click on the verify link and you’ll be taken to a new screen:

Here, you’ll be provided with 2 verification methods:

• By adding a specific, unique META tag to your website’s header;
• By uploading a HTML file into the root FTP folder of your website.

It’s up to you to decide which method will you use, the results are the same.

Now that your site has been verified, you can add the previously generated sitemap to its profile, either by clicking the “Add” link, near the website name on the dashboard, or by navigating the left side menu to Sitemaps -> Add a sitemap. Both methods will take you to this screen:

From the initial drop down menu select “Add General Web Sitemap“. This is the most common selection for text-based-content websites like blogs. In the form below, at point 3, enter the URL of your sitemap. This usually is something like: http://www.youblog.com/sitemap.xml, and click the button to submit it.

Allow some time for Google to process the information of your newly added sitemap. Once the sitemap is approved, your sitemaps dashboard will look like this:

From here, you will gain access to report about your crawling stats, sitemap and website status and many more interesting things that you will be able to access through the options in the left side menu of Google Webmaster Tools.

And that concludes this guide. You should now have your Google Sitemap up and running, nice and easy!

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What is SEO-friendly content and why is it important? Where is the limit between helpful and spam? The answers to these questions are essential to producing high quality, high ranking web content.

What is SEO-friendly content?

Basically, SEO-friendly content is the type of content that is both interesting and helpful for your blog readers as well as attractive for search engine spiders, which leads to better rankings.

Think of this kind of content as the intersection of publishing high quality posts with the search user’s need to find that relevant, quality content. It’s the most basic search engine promotion you could do.

Creating SEO friendly content is by no means an easy task, nor a short term one. The “maintenance” is very important and insures that your search engine rankings are at least kept, if not improved.

Since optimized content can be of great help when it comes to blog and community growth, relevant organic traffic, bounce rate improvement, awareness and much more, you can imagine that these kinds of services don’t come cheap. But, don’t worry, with practice, you’ll find out that it’s not that hard to transform your articles in pretty decent SEO-friendly web content.

Effective optimization techniques

The first and most important thing you need to consider is your readers / future readers. Try approaching from your readers’ perspective. Is your content something of interest? If so, is it presented in an easily readable form?

Targeting simple keywords

The next step is to select the appropriate keywords to target in the optimization process. When it comes to keywords, the best thing to do is think natural. The more natural and simplistic way to express a “need”, the more chances that keyword will be one with a high level of searches.

Look at the little comic strip above and consider this. A publisher writes a review of the “Dark Knight Movie”. Users that want to see that movie will most likely do a search for a review. Which of the following keyword phrases do you think will perform best in searches?

• Review of the Dark Knight movie;
• Dark Knight movie review;
• Dark Knight review.

If we take a look at the results suggested by Google’s Keyword Tool, we’ll find the following statistics based on approximate average search volume:

1. Dark Knight review – 14.800 searches;
2. The Dark Knight review (variation) – 8100 searches;
3. Dark Knight movie review – 880 searches;
4. Review of the Dark Knight movie – irrelevant or very few searches.

So, you see how simplifying the targeted search query is more likely to put you in the spotlight for a higher amount of organic traffic. Repeat the process until you come up with a list of related keywords, to help support the main keyword throughout the post and to avoid unnecessary repetitions and stuffing.

Using the selected keywords

Now that you have a primary phrase to optimize for and a few support phrases, make sure to spread them seamlessly throughout the article. When it feels natural to do so, use bold text or italic (emphasis), but don’t simply bold out entire blocks. That will only hurt your optimization level.

Start from the beginning by using your main phrase in the first sentence or paragraph. Depending on the length of your post, you can try repeating a few times, as long as it does not sound bad for a reader. Repetitions can drive away your visitors and search engines both, as their spiders are “trained” to think and read based on a human model.

Use your main phrase in subtitles and, obviously, in the post title too. Add it to the post’s Meta tags, along with the support keywords. I’ve explained before how you can fine tune your blog to turn your post’s title into a SEO title.

If possible, try adding pictures (relevant for your readers) and use your keywords as ALT text for those images. Sure a search engine spider will not see the actual image, but image oriented spiders like Google’s Image Search will definitely be on the lookout for that alternate text.

You can read one of my previous articles for more tips on keyword optimization.

Conclusions

SEO friendly content is the best investment you can when it comes to your blog’s search engine promotion. It generates natural results with real people reading your posts, based on their needs. And when that happens, the path to conversion is at least half way taken.

Regardless to what some people think, there’s nothing wrong with helping out good content find its way to interested search engine users, as long as you don’t go overboard and turn into search engine spam. The line is thin.

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It’s a known fact that the number and quality of backlinks a page/site gets will affect its search rankings. SEO copywriters have always struggled to write not only search engine friendly content, but also creative content that would make people want to link back. Others chose the easier, but more expensive, way of the “link marketplaces”, such as TLA.

In what follows I’m going to explain one easy enough method to boost your number of backlinks and also improve your blog’s Technorati rank. All with the help of Mixx.

Initial considerations

Those of you familiar with social media, social networking and bookmarking services have surely heard of Mixx and are most probably registered users. For those that are not familiar with this service, I strongly suggest you try it.

Not necessarily because of the traffic that it could provide – which is currently way below services like Digg, Reddit or Stumble Upon – but mainly because is one of the few services that are still not “infected” with trolls, down-voters and spammers. On Mixx you can still find content worth reading and bookmarking and also, Mixx is of great help when it comes to what I’m about to share with you.

How can Mixx boost your backlinks and Technorati rank?

The answer is simple. All bookmarks added to Mixx are “do follow” links. Sure, they are marked with rel=”bookmark”, but that does not negatively affect the link.

So, what could you do to get and make better use of those links?

1. Create a profile

And not just a profile, but rather start building a solid profile. Submit quality content, content that will attract votes. Considering that Mixx has been recently launched, compared to other such services, you can still build a power user profile.

2. You profile page

This page contains links to all stories you’ve submitted. On Mixx you are allowed to submit your own stories, but encouraged to use moderation and common sense. Again, all links are followed by search engines, the profile page is indexed and gets Page Rank. My profile page for example is currently a PR 3.

3. Power users/ Super Mixxers

It’s easier to get in touch and collaborate with power users on Mixx and just as your profile is indexed so is theirs, but only with more relevance and even higher Page Rank. After friendly helping them out, I’m sure that most of them wouldn’t mind submitting some stories for you.

4. Popular stories

And since Mixx is so “new”, you have quite a good chance of making the “popular stories” list. Success is guaranteed with a few supermixxers on your side. The “Popular” page is also indexed, links are followed and it currently has a PR 6. Get your story on the Mixx home page and you’ll get yourself a PR 7 link.

Popular and home page stories will instantly affect your Technorati rank too.

Final considerations

This article is only meant to help you better optimize your online presence and it’s not meant as an encouragement to spam Mixx. I can assure you that the Mixx masters are watching.

So, the best you can do to get in this win-win situation is:

• Join Mixx
• Submit quality and relevant content
• Make Friends
• Help out
• Get help back
• Boost your rankings
• DO NOT spam!

And while you’re on Mixx, you can also follow me.

For more information you can also read my other post on SEO link building.

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When it comes to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) there are so many little things that can affect your blog’s ranking. We’ve talked about headings and titles, META tags and keywords, link building strategies, but how do we put to use our blog’s domain name and hosting to improve our rankings? This “SEO Sunday” episode will explain a few important things you should consider.

Choosing the right TLD

Some say that the TLD (Top Level Domain) – domain name extension – doesn’t matter. Most say it does and from my own experience I must agree with the majority.
First of all, let’s say your writing in your native language other than English. By choosing a country specific TLD (but not exclusively) you’ll tell search engines where your blog is based and to whom it addresses. For English written blogs, a .COM or a .NET TLD will most likely do the best jobs since the .COM is the most common extension and English the most used language online. Also, .COMs are a good alternative if your country specific TLD has already been registered.

Keyword domain names vs. Brandable domain names

A keyword in the domain name will definitely help your rankings for that specific keyword. Still, this doesn’t mean that a well optimized blog using a brandable domain name will not rank well. If your going for a brandable domain, try to play around a keyword, like I did with Blogsessive. It will add a bit to the value.

Dashes and numbers in the domain name

Unless strictly required (numbers are part of the identity, like Hi5), I would suggest to stay away from numbers. SEO wise they add no value. Also, if in the future you’ll be looking to sell that domain name, all the money you’ll get will mostly be based on the traffic that name received and its page rank (if it will be the case).
Dashes are still dropping the financial value, but in regards to SEO, search engines seam to accept them – even if with less value – and with the right on and off page optimization they could rank very well.

Domain registration period

When you register a new domain, try and register it for at least three or four years. Why? Simple, search engines will know that domain will be around for a longer period of time and it won’t be a simple spamming/domain flipping registration. Thus, they will add more weight to the results coming from your domain. Also, if you’re buying a pre-registered domain names from a domain name marketplace, try to buy one that has been registered and not dropped for a long time. The longer, the better. It also adds to its financial value.

Register one or two more major TLDs

Let’s say you’ve just registered BlogDomainName.com and you’re looking to build a brand around that blog. By registering BlogDomainName.net and BlogDomainName.org (for example) and pointing them to the .COM, you’re telling search engines that you’re consolidating your online brand, which will again add weight to the results coming from your blog.

Domain name history

It’s always a good idea to check out if the domain name has been registered before by using a WHOIS tool, and if it has been, also check out its history with a service like the Wayback Machine. If that domain has been banned by search engines due to whatever reasons, don’t buy it. You’ll have an almost impossible job building up its reputation.

Shared hosting IP vs. Dedicated hosting IP

By sharing an IP with many other websites and blogs you’ll lose a bit of your own identity in front of search engines. Also, if search engines have a habit of banning the whole IP range if one of the websites you’re sharing the IP with will be banned for spam or other strange activities. By getting a dedicated IP you’ll be on your own, safe as long as you act fair. Dedicated hosting is not cheap, but many hosting providers offer dedicated IPs with even the cheapest hosting plans for a small extra fee, sometimes as low as $3.

So, as you can see, there are many other factors than links and META tags when it comes to optimization. Do everything right and you be getting closer to those high rankings, step by step.

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One of the most basic, yet highly effective things you need to consider when doing blog optimization is using keywords to indicate search engine spiders what your posts are about. The more relevant to the page’s content, the better the search engine ranking.
Keyword optimization is part of on-page SEO, which means that it is a part of the optimization you’ll make on your blog’s code.

What you should know right from the start is that keywords can give your blog posts a boost in rankings or get your blog out of the first and most important search results. It all comes down to how well you’re using them and how relevant they are to your content.

Rules of keyword optimization

Since you’re reading this, I have no doubt that you understand how important well-researched keywords are and that you’re willing to make better use of them. These are some of the most important things you need to consider:

Things to do

• Consider using keywords relevant to your article;
• If the keywords are somehow related to each other, that’s a plus (for example: internet marketing, online marketing, search engine marketing);
• Use different keywords for different blog posts. In most cases, search engines will return two results from you blog at most, so having five or six posts optimized for the same set of keywords would be a waste of content;
• Write your article first, but with the right keywords in mind, not the other way around;
• Use your most important keyword(s) in the title tag. If you’re using a SEO plugin, you can set a different page title than that of your blog post;
• Use those keywords in the META description too;
• Use the keywords in the title of your blog post and preferably in the first phrase or paragraph of your article;
• Edit the post slug (permalink) so that it contains the most important keyword and also try to keep it as short as possible;
• Place the keyword(s) a few more times (don’t overdo it) throughout the article in a humanly natural order and context;
• If there are other older relevant posts on your blog, try to create backlinks from them using the selected keywords as anchor text (same goes for external incoming links).

Things to avoid

• Don’t target too many keywords. Use as many keywords as you feel that are relevant to your content which means they are present on the page and have value to a visitor. A list of 50 keywords means that most probably at least 40 of them are almost totally irrelevant;
• Don’t use irrelevant keywords. If your post is about NASA’s recent trip to Mars, I don’t know how Demi Moore or Vi*gra would fit in the picture;
• Using text formatting on some keywords in your content is OK. Bolding everything out is not;
• Avoid duplicating keywords in your META tags;
• Placing a list of comma separated keywords in your title tag and META description is a big NO. Write something natural and appealing to humans;
• Avoid keyword stuffing. Don’t fill your blog post with keywords only to increase the keyword density. It is unnatural, provides a negative user experience and will probably get you penalized by search engines.

Conclusions

Some say that keywords don’t really matter when it comes to search engine rankings, and since everyone is entitled to an opinion, I will disagree with that. Same people say that their blogs or websites rank high even if they neglected keyword optimization. That is true, but I’d like to see how well they perform when they’ll be competing with a well optimized blog or website when similar factors are on the table, like: almost same age (possibly younger), number of indexed pages, number of backlinks etc.

Keyword optimization is part of a much bigger and complex process. Acting blind in front of it is like sticking your head in the sand, hoping that if you don’t see anyone, nobody will see you.

Next week, we’ll talk about choosing relevant keywords and discuss a few keyword suggestion tools.

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It’s time once again for a SEO Sunday special, dedicated to links, link building, tips and good practices of linking. It is a known fact that links pointing to your blog are meant to increase its value, not only in the eyes of search engines but also when it comes to authority measuring services like Technorati.

Links are a great tool to increase you search engine ranking and your blog’s visibility, but only when the link building is done smart. Sometimes, people that heard about the importance of link building are willing to do whatever it takes to gather as many links to their websites and blogs as possible, and this is potentially damaging their rankings. So, before going any further, I’ll tell you some things that you should stay away from.

Bad link building practices

More and more link building services are promoted on forums these days. I’m sure that many of you have come across those “1000 directory links for $10″ topics. Well, some people have to make a living, and that’s not to blame, but before paying for such services you should consider a few things.

Most sellers state that links are placed in directories with page rank varying from 2 to 6/7. In most cases, this is only partially true, as that page rank value is only met on the directory’s home page and not on the actual page where your link will be placed.

Further more, these service provider will most likely submit your blog using the same title and description or at most with 2 small variations. Why is this bad? Because out of nowhere, 1000 links to your site, all containing the same information will pop up in search results. How does that sound? That sounds a bit like spam to me, so be careful with it. Link farms don’t work!

Another thing to avoid is buying or selling links through link market websites. These websites have a bad record with Google and have been penalized since their services are seen as a threat to Google’s policy about natural, relevant backlinks. So, if you care about being in Google’s grace, search engine rankings and page rank, think twice before using them.

Whenever you want to buy a link, make sure it stays between you and that website’s owner and also learn as much as you can about his website’s history and previous practices. Also, if you’re going to buy directory links, make sure you study the offer well. No serious provider will offer a good service for such a low fee. Link building through directory submissions can have positive results if managed well.

Link building: Reciprocal links

Reciprocal links are a common practice between start-up bloggers. These have less value than one way links but still can be very helpful under some circumstances. Reciprocal links ease the spider’s circulation and the page rank transfer when encountered between blogs that activate in the same niche, approach the same topics.

Link building: One way links

One way links have a stronger SEO value because they are considered more natural. Getting one way links to your blog from pages that display relevant content and also have high page rank are certain to give you a boost in search engine rankings.

If we’re talking about 100% natural links, there’s basically no way that you could control where these non-reciprocal links come from. You cannot pick the page rank or the anchor text, but still, there’s one thing you can do.

Write good quality posts as they are more likely to attract the interest of higher authority blogs and websites and so, pass some of their search engine trust to you.

Link building: Deep linking

Deep linking is one highly important factor when it comes to link building. It does not only add to the total number of link backs to your blog, but also contributes to traffic levels and increases spiders’ interest in your content, making it more likely for them to index it faster, give it more importance and check back more often to rebuild their cache.

Link building without considering deep linking is meant to fail. Again, great content is one powerful tool to attract such links.

More good linking practices

Consider building a strong internal linking system. Make sure you use relevant anchor text whenever linking to you own post. Do so to ease up spiders’ discovery and navigation through your blog.

Also, if you’re one of those link-love givers, at least do it right. Take 5 more seconds to add at least a relevant title to that external link if not a good anchor text. It costs you nothing but helps the receiver a lot. After all, that’s what link love is supposed to be about, a way to show appreciation.

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Here comes another SEO Sunday, but this time, instead of writing another Blog SEO Tips post, I’m going to review and recommend you a free eBook on SEO for WordPress 2.5 Blogs by SEO and PR consultant Mihaela Lica.

I’ve just finished reading her book and believe me, those 44 PDF pages where really worth it, and the best part is that you don’t have to do anything to get the book. No subscription is required, no commenting contest or link backs. You just click the link in her blog post and start reading.

The book will guide you through steps like installing and setting up your WordPress 2.5 blog, setting up permalinks and onsite & offsite optimization tips and techniques.

Here are the contents of this eBook, just to have an idea of what to expect:

Introduction
Chapter 1: Hosting
Chapter 2: Installing WordPress and Keeping Your Site W3C Compliant
Chapter 3: Optimizing Permalinks
Chapter 4: Basic SEO Techniques Made Easy
Chapter 5: Avoiding the Duplicate Content Penalty
Chapter 6: Creating Google Sitemaps
Chapter 7: Other On-page SEO Techniques
Chapter 8: Optimizing Images
Chapter 9: Pinging
Chapter 10: Important Linking Tips
Conclusion

I’m going to be honest with you and tell you that most of the SEO information provided is not revolutionary. So why do I recommend it?

Because it’s a must read! Because most of us forget about the most basic things when it comes to keeping our blogs clean and search engine friendly. I know I do it, and I bet that if a SEO specialist would take a look at my blog’s code will run like crazy.

And I’ll give you one more reason to download and read this book. Why would you want to spend hours searching the internet, filtering all the information and in the end getting the same result, or maybe poorer, when you have it all in one PDF.

Did I mention that it’s free? Yes, I know, we all love free stuff, as long as it is good quality. And free, high quality is always hard to find.

Still here?

Ok, you need to do this now. Scroll down, you see the big picture? Click it, get your copy and enjoy it! Don’t forget to come back and tell me what do you think about it.

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We keep hearing about “organic traffic” and how important it is for our blogs. Well, organic traffic is the traffic you receive from search engines, based on the level of relevance and optimization of your blog posts. The more relevant for the user’s search term, the higher the ranking in search engine’s results.

Let’s say that you wrote a very interesting and helpful post. You would definitely want it to rank well, and by doing so, attract more traffic to it. This traffic can generate both comments, a base for advertising and also potential backlinks to your post. In short: It’s important.

So, how can you optimize you blog posts? By doing 3 simple things:

1. Optimize your titles;
2. Optimize the post body;
3. Optimize the internal links.

Optimizing the titles

In one of my past posts I’ve told you about the importance of writing SEO friendly titles with the use of H1, H2, H3 tags. And since on single post pages your titles should be listed with H1 tags, search engines will give them maximum attention.

Your post’s title should definitely use the primary keyword, the keyword for which you want the post to rank higher in search results. To decide on your primary keyword and the best form that you could use, you need to run a bit of research on common search habits of users.

For example, let’s say your blog post is about websites where you can find and download images for free. People tend to shorten the search query, so you’ll most probably get only a few searches for a keyword like “images for free”. Instead, the chances are much better for a keyword like “free images”.

Considering this, your post title could be one of the following variations:

• How/Where to find free images
• Free images website(s)
• Search for free images

You should also consult some keyword suggestion tools or even Google AdWords Keyword Tool, which is a very useful application. Another useful service from Google is Google Trends, an application that allows you to access statistics of search trends over periods of time and in different regions of the world.

You can also check out Brian Clark’s article on how to write headlines that work. It’s quite a recommended reading.

Optimizing the post body

Optimizing the title is not enough. You need to do a bit of work on you post’s body too. Using the same technique I’ve described above, focus on finding secondary keywords for you blog post. These are similar or related phrases that could boost your article’s relevance.

If we stick to our “free images” example, an interesting list of secondary keywords could be:
- Free photos
- Free stock images
- Stock photography

Make sure you place secondary keywords in your post’s body, but don’t abuse them. It’s OK to want to attract the search engines, but never to write exclusively for them. At least, out of respect for your readers. They don’t want, and won’t read a spam article.

Optimizing the internal links

Whenever linking to other posts of your blog, make sure you use primary (best) or secondary keywords. This will increase the level of relevance, and also help the readers to better identify the content they should expect when clicking a link.

Also to consider

Whenever you want to optimize you posts, it’s always a good idea to run a search on Google and see how others perform for that search, and what form of the keyword they chose to use.

Also, a good idea would be to study your website’s statistics and re-optimize some of your older posts for keywords that returned your blog, but you did not thought of using initially. This will happen, and if the statistics are “kind enough” to tell us, why not use the free tip?

And this concludes another blog SEO tips post on SEO Sundays at Blogsessive.

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Looking for really affordable premium WordPress themes?

Another quiet Sunday in the blogosphere, as usual. This morning I thought about writing another link share post or a WordPress theme recommendation, but later I’ve decided to break the pattern (since it’s all so quiet) and make Sundays the host of a blog SEO tips series. In this first post I’m going to talk about the importance of using SEO friendly titles (H1, H2, H3) and the right way to do so.

Usual Coding Patterns in WordPress Themes

If you’re even a bit familiar with the WordPress themes, by now you’ve probably took a look at your theme’s files. Blog pages are rendered through an association of a few PHP files with standard names (index.php, archive.php, single.php) with different templates of the theme, based on the content type.

The index.php file usually stands for your home page, also being capable of replacing any other template that hasn’t been already defined. So, if you don’t have a template for search results (search.php), the index file will take over and render your search results page.

Each of these templates includes smaller pieces of code to build up the final result. The most used are header.php, sidebar.php and footer.php.

For now, we’ll limit our attention to the following files in your theme’s folder:

• header.php
• index.php
• single.php
• page.php (not every theme has it)
• archive.php, search.php (not every theme has them)

Optimizing the Header File

Having your primary keyword present at the top of you page it’s very important.
Considering the fact that most themes come with text based logos instead of graphics, we’ll be looking for the <h1> tag in the header.php file.

If you look at the WordPress default theme will find this piece of code, close to the end of the file:

<h1><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>/"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></h1>
<div class="description"><?php bloginfo('description'); ?></div>

The first line displays your blog’s title into a link to the homepage, inside the H1 tag.
The second line displays your blog’s description.

H1 is the most important heading style and the coding recommendations state that only one should be used per page. When talking about a homepage, archive page or search results, it’s best that we optimize these pages according to our main keywords, therefore this H1 tag is required.

But what about on the single post pages? When we display single post, we would want to have their pages optimized according to their content, not the overall keywords of the blog. This is where the H1 should be removed from the header.php file, and placed instead of the H2 surrounding the posts title, to give make it more visible and representative in the eyes of a search engine spider.

How do we do that? First we need to add some conditional tags in the header.
Look for the piece of code that I’ve listed above and replace it with this one:

<?php if(is_single() OR is_page()) {
// On single post pages and static pages we use this code
?>
<h2><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>/"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></h1>
<div class="description"><?php bloginfo('description'); ?></div>
<?php }
else {
// On home page and archive style pages we use this code
?>
<h1><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>/"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></h1>
<div class="description"><?php bloginfo('description'); ?></div>
<?php } ?>

By using some WordPress conditional tags we managed to limit the use of the H1 HTML tag to all archive style pages (including the homepage).

Next, we move to single posts and static pages to continue our optimization.

Optimizing the Single Posts and Static Pages

After we’ve made the changes in the header file, we need to apply some modifications to the single.php and page.php files to make their titles more search engine friendly.

Open the default theme’s single.php file and look for this piece of code:

<h2><a href="<?php echo get_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"
title="Permanent Link: <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>

Remember that I’ve told you we are allowed to used <h1> only once per file, for our most important title / phrase. Since we’ve eliminated the use of <h1> on single posts and static pages in the header.php, now, all we have to do is to change <h2> and </h2> with <h1> and </h1>, just like this:

<h1><a href="<?php echo get_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"
title="Permanent Link: <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h1>

There you go, now your most important phrase on a single post page is the post’s title, as it should be!
Most themes don’t come with this type of heading importance separation and by following this guide you’ll be able to fix this issue on your own with no trouble at all.

While the default theme does not have a page.php template defined, you could clone the single.php file and rename it. If you don’t clone it, the index.php file will be used to display static pages, which means you’ll list page titles using the <h2> instead of <h1>.

Consider Using Subheadings in Your Posts

For further SEO improvement, you should consider using relevant subheadings inside your post to evidentiate different parts of your post’s structure.
Write down your article and when you’re finished, switch to HTML view and add <h3> & </h3> around you subheadings, like this:

<h3>This Is a Subheading</h3>

Final Thoughts

Usually, titles are the most important links on your blog. Through them, users and spiders alike navigate through your content. Use them smart and effectively.
If you have any questions or need further help with this, feel free to drop a comment.
Also, join me again next Sunday for a new post in the Blog Seo Tips series.

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