Blog Optimization

How do you make money blogging? This is clearly only possible with traffic, so how do you get traffic for your blog?

The following steps are quick and easy but very affective. It's a simple guide to optimising your blog for the search engines and building a steady stream of interested visitors.

You will also find useful links ot other blogs recommending techniques and their experiences.

Optimizing your Blog

Blog optimization relates to the changes to wording and layout on your blog. Key changes include keyword choice, keyword density, formats, link structure and Meta tags

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.

When selecting your keywords, look for more specific phrases to start with rather than mainstream simple words. e.g. if a site is about mobile phones then it may be a better solution to optimise for "nokia N72 mobile phone" rather than "mobile phone". This means you will have less competition and more targeted visitors.

Now that you have a list of your main keyword phrases, you need to find all the related keywords which people are also searching for.
Use this tool to find related keywords to your main keyword. This will also show you how popular each keyword is.
Click to use Keyword Playground Tool
http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-playground.php
You may find that the lesser searched keywords will have less competition so it will be easier to get higher search engine rankings and more visitors.

The following tool will analyze your current website to determine what keyword phrases you are optimized for, then it will list all related keywords so that you may also include these on your site. A perfect tool for broadening your websites exposure on the search engines.
Click to use Website Keyword Suggestion Tool
http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-playground.php

Check the Density of Your Blogs Keywords

Keyword density refers to what percentage each keyword appears on a page or your entire website relevant to all other words. e.g. The Keyphrase "mobile phone" may have a density of 5% on a page relevant to the total page content.
If you are optimizing for a keyphase then it's best to have a density of between 3%-5%. Any more may be considered search engine spamming and any less may give it too lower importance for your page. The keyword density includes Alt tags on your images and text. (text appearing when you hold your cursor over an image).

Use the following tool to check the density of keywords throughout your website.
Click to use Keyword Density Check Tool
http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php

If the results show that your main keyphrase has the highest percentage but is lower than 5% then it is well optimized.

Check the Quality of Your Blogs Content

Search Engines are known to act upon websites that contain Duplicate / Similar content.

Your content may be similar to other websites on the Internet, or pages from within your own blog may be similar to each other. The following tool allows you to determine the percentage of similarity between two pages.

The exact percentage of similarity after which a search engine may penalize you is not known, it varies from search engine to search engine, Your aim should be to keep your page similarity as LOW as possible.
Click to use Similar Page Check Tool
http://www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php

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.

Check your page links: How many links on a page, linking to bad neighborhoods

Search engines pay attention to the first 100 links on a page, these are the ones they follow first and give the most importance to if placed on a keyword.

Try to keep your links to less than 100 and only link out to quality websites which are also listed in search engines. If you link to websites not listed and that also link to other bad websites, you can be de-listed from search engines. These may include directories which asked you to link back to them as a requirement to be included.

Broken Link Checker

Use the following tool to check your site for broken links. These are links in your website which no longer go to the correct page (possibly if a page was removed)
Click to use Dead Link Checking Tool
http://www.dead-links.com

META Tags

The META descriptions and keywords are one of the most important aspects of building a keyword theme within your website.

Most blogs and independent websites allow you to change all Meta tags. Start with the site Title, this is often the name of your site. It is the first line of text generally in blue which appear in the search engine listings. It's the single most important line of wording to describe your site. Be short (about 6-8 words), include your main keywords and try not to use stop words (and, by, the). A good example may be "Discount Mobile phones online store".

The Meta description, sometimes known as the site description, is the second most important text within your website. Try to use all your keywords in a clear sentence with the most important keywords at the beginning of the description or at the start of a sentence. A good example may be "Buy discount mobile phones including brands like Nokia and Motorola. Best sellers include the Nokia N72 and Motorola Razor mobile phone". Keep the description to less than 200 words. .

Try to include keywords for every category or page you create. There is generally a section on all the blog softwares to place keywords for a post or page. Use the most important keywords at the start of the list and don't use any which are not written in the content of your website.

Building Inbound links

The best kind of inbound links are from sites with related information to yours, high Google Page Rank and lots of unique content. The older the inbound link and the more natural it looks to search engines, the more importance it will be given.

Inbound link Checker

As inbound links account for half the optimization process, it is important that you build as many quality inbound links as possible. Search engines see inbound links as a vote for a blog, the more votes a blog receives and the more important the person voting, the better the receiving blog ranks.
If the inbound link is on a keyword, then you are also receiving a higher search engine rank for that keyword.

Use the following tools to analyze which websites are linking to you and on what keyword the link is from.

Click to use Anchor Text Analysis Tool
http://www.webconfs.com/anchor-text-analysis.php

Click to use Backlink Summary Tool
http://www.webconfs.com/backlink-summary.php

Submit Your blog to Search Engines and Directories.

Use the following links to Get listed and build inbound links from search engines and directories. DO NOT link back to any of these directories and DO NOT pay for a listing. Only list your site with free ones which are easy to do.

Search Google for directories that you can use to build inbound links "blog directories)

Smorty blog advertising is the most useful tool for building quality inbound links.

www.dmoz.org This is the most important directory in the world to get listed in for a good inbound link.
http://www.submitexpress.com/submit.html Submits your URL to all major search engines

Blog URL

The domain name of a blog is also very important. e.g. www.politicalblog.com is very well optimised for the keyphrase political blog, which may be a term many people specifically search for. Your blog will be well rewarded in rankings for this keyphrase.

Subdomains e.g. www.politialblog.blogspot.com are free and also well optimised however it is showen that the root domain is far better rewarded so it's best to buy a domain name for your blog.

Useful links

http://www.problogger.com Professional blogger writing about his experiences and how to best get the results from blogging that you need.

10 things I wish I had known 6 months ago Lists 10 things she wish she knew about blogging and how to make money.

How to make money from your blog Article about a bloggers experience in making money from his blog.

RSS Feeds Feedburner is the worlds most popular RSS feed service. Place your URL in their system to send your blog to thousands of other websites looking for content.