Basic SEO for Bloggers

Blogs are naturally suited to SEO. They are driven by content, updated often, and provide a good basis for link generation. Here are a few quick SEO tips bloggers can use to further optimize their posts.

• Keyword density can make or break your optimization. A low density can be ineffective, and a high density can get you penalized by the search engines. The sweet spot is between three to five keywords or phrases for every 300 words of copy. That will also keep your post from sounding “stuffed”.

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• If a keyword is awkward and difficult to fit cleanly into a sentence, abandon it. It may not be worth the grammatical gymnastics just to get a certain keyword included in the post. Your readers will thank you, and the search engines will rank you.

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• If you have a keyword phrase that you absolutely love but are having trouble working it into your writing, see if it might not work better in a title. The less stringent grammatical rules for titles make them an ideal place for otherwise awkward keyword phrases.

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• Another great nook for keywords is in the alt text of images. You are including images, right? Images attract readers like lottery winners attract estranged relatives. And since you should count the alt text in your overall word count, you can free up valuable blog copy that might have been reserved for a specific keyword.

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• If you use hashtags in your post, try to focus your arsenal down into only what you write about on a regular basis. This will give your blog some longevity and staying power, as well as a more consistent basis of hashtags for the search engines to index.

These may seem like basic SEO tips for beginners, but it never hurts to revisits the basics, no matter how long you have been SEOing. If you have any additional SEO tips bloggers might benefit from, feel free to leave them in the comments below.