Blog SEO Tips: Are keywords that important?
A few days ago I received a comment on one of Blogsessive’s older posts on SEO & keywords. That comment got me a little worried about the fact that due to people spreading incomplete information, or just putting out statements like “Google doesn’t care about keywords”, some of you might think that having a keyword strategy is pointless. This is what reader David Housman asked:
I thought that search engines had stopped factoring keywords into relevancy?
The source of this belief is probably a post published on the Google Webmaster Central Blog back in September 2009 in which Matt Cutts refers strictly to Google not making use of the keywords META tag in order to calculate a search result’s relevancy to the search query.
In other words, you could type 300 keywords of your liking there. Google will just skip them entirely and rather decide if the result is relevant only based on the content itself. This doesn’t mean that the Google bot will ignore your keywords. It means that it will consider only those keywords present on page, in the content. That’s why it is extremely important to write your blog post from both the perspective of a human reader and a search engine bot.
I’m not going to get any deeper into the topic of writing SEO friendly content. Just remember that it’s a must if you want to rank high for certain keywords and phrases. For more information please read some of the articles I have published here in the past:
Triple Your Traffic with Content Distribution Techniques
There are billions of blogs in the blogosphere. People always say that creating another blog might not be the better thing since almost everything online is saturated. Of course, that’s a complete baloney! Fortunately 60-70% of blogs don’t get traction and just couldn’t seem to make progress. And it’s because of several reasons which I wouldn’t want to talk about here.
Most people fall into this big misconception about blogging. This misconception is about “post and publish”. People think that the key to getting traffic is by creating a killer post, then publishing it. We all know it’s not the case. If no one reads your blog, then no one is even going to notice you created a good post! Obviously the one thing you have to do is to let people know “you” exists in the blogosphere. How? By spreading your content. Today I would like to talk about how you can possibly triple your traffic by spreading your content. Without further “fluff” here they are:
Blog SEO Tips: SEO-Friendly Content is the Key
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.
Click here to read the full blog post!
Is Content Really the King?
There’s this saying that goes around that “content is king“, which I’m sure that we all agree upon, but what does it mean? Why is it that so many people recommend writing high quality, original content and why some blogs don’t really make it big, despite the quality posts they publish? Let’s take a closer look at this matter and find out what it takes to make a king out of your content.
A king without a kingdom
Just like most websites, a blog is defined by many attributes. Among them, the most notable are the content, the design, the usability and its visibility. Excelling in any one of these categories, but ignoring the others will not be sufficient to make your blog stand out.
Think of your content as a king without a kingdom. Who is it going to rule over? How will people find your content if it doesn’t get enough internet and search engine exposure? How will readers navigate through your older posts if you don’t guide them or give them the required tools to find what they are looking for. How do you expect them to react if your blog looks like thousands of other blogs available out there? Why would they expect yours to be different if you don’t take the time to at least make it look different?
It’s highly important that you work on the whole ensemble of things that can improve your blog’s quality, before thinking of making a king out of your content.
Click here to read the full blog post!
10 Tips on Facing a Content Crisis Situation
We’ve all been there, whether we’re talking about blogging tips, games, gadgets or celebrity gossip! Content crisis is one of blogger’s biggest nightmares, making us lose sleep hours, jump meals and drink tons of coffee. Facing such a situation could be a daunting task especially for niche bloggers, since their topics are much more restrictive that those of a “all-about-everything” type of blog.
When starting a new blog, every blogger feels like he/she has lots of interesting things to share with the world. If you follow closely one such blog, you’ll definitely see a higher publishing rate in the first months, but as time passes, bloggers publish less often.
I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, as long as it is consistent, and consistency is one the greatest things a blog can achieve. With time, people get over that publish-everything fury and start dealing with more important matters, writing more insightful posts, in one word, they evolve.
But even when taking their blogging skills to a higher level, bloggers have to face the challenge of creative new, interesting and why not, intriguing content.
Click here to read the full blog post!
10 Blogging tips for a better reader experience
The quality of the reader’s experience is essential to your blog’s success. It is most important that you deliver original, interesting and well-written content every time you hit the “Publish Post” button. The way you manage to deliver this content will finally result in your reader’s reaction toward your blog. So, whenever you want to publish a new article, you should consider the following blogging tips:
1. Choose a topic
And stick with it. We live in a dynamic era. People have less and less time to spend for themselves or to look for information. Deliver you content in a straight-forward way, without altering the subject.
2. The Title is your best ally
Whenever you decide to post a new article, try to extract the essence of the topic and formulate one short, descriptive title that perfectly represents the information that unfolds below. The shorter and more expressive the title, the easier for people to find it, remember it and recommend it.
3. Unique content
Provide your users with unique content. It’s very hard these days, but it’s well worth it. If your topic has been approached before by other bloggers, it doesn’t mean that you can’t express your opinions on the subject. Just keep in mind the fact that readers tend to read multiple sources for a topic and select the most representative and clean information they find. Who knows, maybe you’ll find those who share your point of view on the matter.
4. Write for people
Some bloggers tend to write their articles in a fanatic-SEO way. It’s always good to use representative keywords in your post, but don’t exaggerate. Your most important friend is the reader. The better the reader’s experience, the better your blog will rank in search listings. Those indexing bots that everyone talks about have been developed, after all, by humans. You might fool them once, but does it worth the risk?
5. Use images
Only when they provide help for a better understanding of a term/fact/topic. A picture is worth a thousand words, but keep in mind that blogging is about writing, not drawing.
6. Reference
Give your article more credibility. Provide users with good reference to your content so that if a reader wants to find out more information on the topic, he/she will have the right tools at his/her disposal, making your website the perfect start for a future knowledge development.
7. Link building
If other bloggers have approached the same topic with interesting content, relate you content to theirs. This will attract fellow bloggers to you website and so help you develop a good linking system. The key to the success of this step resides in the quality of your content.
8. Use tags
Think of tags as if they were keywords. They are helpful for indexing bots, but most important, they help readers find related, relevant content. Pick your tags carefully, in perfect sync with the provided information.
9. Cross article reference
If, in the past, you have published similar or related articles, make sure to include them in your new post as related posts. This will help users find more content on your blog, spend more time and create more page views. If you use an ad system, I’m sure that the importance of those page views is familiar to you.
10. Respond to comments
Take a moment and engage your readers in a discussion. It’s always nice to show your appreciation to those that give a few minutes of their busy life to comment your posts.
Finally, consider these blogging tips, not as secure paths to success, but as ways to ensure the quality of your readers’ experience.
