Guest post by Sandro Lonardi
As you probably know SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, in other words, intelligent techniques that help make your blog easier for search engine to find and index. The more SEO work you do on your website, the higher the chance that you will attract visitors looking for what you offer. SEO will make it easy to people to find you website on the web.
This is a list of easy edits you can do to your blog to score better in the search results.
1. Unique Titles
Make sure to don’t have any duplicate page titles in your website. You can use Google Webmaster Tools to make sure you don’t have any entries that are duplicated by mistake.
2. Choose Your Tags and Categories Smartly
Use an Excel sheet to plan how you’re going to use categories and tags. This is extremely useful when it comes to separating your ideas for an editorial plan, and also ensures that it’s easier to keep your site updated in the long run. Pick a few tags that fit each category and stick to them rather than randomly assigning new tags every time you upload a post.
For example, in your blog is fashion related you can include categories such as “Catwalks, Latest Trends and Cheap Fashion” and for tags you could have the designers names.
3. Add Images
Search engines are unable to index images so in effect they’re blind to the actual content. However it is in your best interest to provide the search engine with the best information possible surrounding the image as this is taken for granted. This can include the name of the file, the ALT and TITLE tags and the captions. Make sure that when you’re adding an you are using a proper file name that describes the content accurately, while also using proper attributes that will indicate to the search engines that the page is about a particular topic and provides some photos about it.
4. [Advanced][Bonus] Use the Schema.org Markup
Schema.org is a project in collaboration with Google, Bing and Yahoo. It allows webmasters to implement a markup in the code the explains what the site is about to the search engines. This allows them to make a distinction between ideas that use the same word. Think for example of a page about the keyword “apple”: it could be either referring to the fruit or the popular technology company? This markup will help search engines put your content in context and and also increase your search results presence by, for example by adding the breadcrumb to the search results.
Conclusion
The first three of our suggestions are very easy to implement; just check your page title, make sure all the images have proper names and tags and make sure to have categorized in the best way possible you articles.
The last point is a bit more complicated and needs some HTML coding experience but on Schema.org there are great guides on how to use it and it’s rapidly becoming a standard for websites. This means you should take this is a chance to level up your SEO and HTML knowledge.
I would love to discuss with you this and other points in the comments!
For those running a self-hosted WordPress blog, I would also suggest using an SEO plugin such as All-in-One SEO, or the one I use, Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin. They take over where WordPress’s built in SEO tools stop and make it easier to tweak the important stuff.
Hi Marshall,
I use Yoast WordPress SEO too and I have to confirm that is definitely the best SEO plugin for WordPress. It has all the required functionality and works just fine!
I’ve heard great things the SEO plugin by Yoast. Been thinking of making the switch… currently using All-In-One which has worked great as well up to this point.
I like your idea about keeping a spreadsheet with tags and categories Sandro. I currently have one that just tracks my posts, but I can see how adding this information can be helpful!
Thanks for contributing this great post to NewBizBlogger.com!
Ciao Michele
It’s a pleasure to write for NewBizBlogger.com
Regarding categories and tags the most important think is to don’t have them duplicated, a spreadsheet can out with help the planing process.
Thanks a lot for sharing this quite simple for implementation but still much useful and effective steps
Hi Sandro, Kevin Stacey here…
I’m really loving the tips you shared in this post as SEO is constantly evolving and blogger like you keep the masses informed.
I’ll keep checking back for more tips and wish you the best!
Thanks Sandro and Michelle! I never heard of Schema.org but that sounds like a good thing to try. It’s amazing how well search engines are getting at understanding semantically related content and deducing what a particular word means in a given context. It’s awesome, but it should also be scary for anyone who is trying to rely on SEO strategies from the 20th century. I still know people who think keyword stuffing works, but the Schema.org collaborative efforts show that search engines could be smarter than us in the next few years. It pays to do these things right!
Thanks Kevin, I’m happy you found the tips useful!
Kalen, the way search results are ranked is undergoing rapid changes; last year’s effective strategy may not be valid anymore. In fact, each year SEOMoz publishes their list of the upcoming Search Engine Ranking for that year. You can keep yourself updated here: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors
Awesome article, Sandro!
I especially like the first and last tips. Never thought about those. I guess I should “play” with them
As with the others, I think I am doing great (Except for images; I don’t include images in my posts these days, I think I should work on that too).
As for the categories, I just renamed those a few days back (The former names were used in many other blog, I wanted to stand out
).
Thanks for the tips,
Jeevan Jacob John
Thanks Jeevanjacobjohn!
Differentiating your blog and using category names that stands out it’s surely a good idea. You could use more traditional / standard keywords in your tags, in this way you can still rank good for the keywords that most of the people actually search for.
Thanks Sandro for your awesome article. i am seeking tips for self optimization my blog & stopped here by your article. will visit again.
Great tips, it really helps when doing blog posts. Thank you so much for posting.
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