How To SEO Your Blog Posts For High(er) Rankings
Make Your Blog Posts Search Engine Friendly – My Best Tips to SEO Optimize Your Blog
To make your posts properly optimized for a better chance at higher search engine rankings and to be more SEO friendly, I can offer a number of suggestions. Surprisingly, many bloggers don’t pay any attention to SEO issues, so their blogs are basically lost in search-engine-land.
That’s a shame, as it’s really not hard to attain decent (or even top) organic search engine positions by following some basic SEO guidelines. But I must briefly mention that to keep any blog in the top SERPs (search engine results pages), you need to continue to add quality content on a regular basis, and you also need good quality incoming links.
My SEO Suggestions to Optimize Your Blog Posts
The Title: Here’s the first SEO step. Your main keyword phrase must be incorporated into your post’s title, and it should be at the beginning, rather than the end of the Title if at all possible.
Post Slug: The slug (one of the built-in tools in your blog) is found over in the right hand side column of the WordPress editor. By default, if left empty, the slug will automatically be filled with your entire title when you publish the post, but with the words all in lower case and each word separated by a dash. As example, this post’s slug is: how-to-seo-your-wordpress-blog-posts-for-high-rankings.
The slug is just like the page name of a traditional HTML coded website. But, you can manually type in whatever you wish the slug to be (it will not alter your Title). Many people, myself included, will alter the words in the slug to be shorter than their Title, or maybe a little more keyword focused than what their post’s Title happens to be. I don’t make a habit of doing this, but every now and then do alter it for one reason or another.
Blog Post: Following “traditionally taught” SEO techniques, you should use your keyword phrase in the very first sentence of your post.
Contrary to a lot of information floating around the internet, it is not necessary to use H1, H2, bold, or italic codes as examples, on your keyword phrase in order to gain higher rankings. But, for aesthetic reasons, you may wish to use one of these HTML codes to bring attention to the actual keyword phrase in your copy.
I suggest you sprinkle your keyword phrase throughout your copy. Use the keyword phrase a little bit more than you would in normal conversation. But don’t overdue it … you’ll look like you’re spamming. Also, incorporate your keyword into the very last paragraph.
Tags: Tags are a misunderstood, thusly often overlooked, part of optimizing your blog. Make sure to use the tags at all times. Include your main keyword phrase and then some keyword variations or modifiers. Tags are sort of like labels, but in this situation, they are keywords that pertain to the content of your post. Tags help make it easier for other people to find blog posts relating to a specific category, or subject for instance. So include keywords that you think would help your post be found if someone were searching for it 
Hyperlinks: If your posts contains hyperlinks to other posts (or pages) in your blog, to web pages on other sites, or to affiliate programs that are related to the topic, it is a good SEO tactic to include a keyword phrase to hyperlink to them. Of course make sure it is a keyword that pertains in some way to what your post is about.
Images: I like using images in my blog posts whenever I can, since a picture often speaks a thousand words. Make sure you include the “alt” tag in the image’s coding, and make sure you’ve placed the keyword phrase in there. This helps give you a small rankings boost.
For Serious WordPress Bloggers, I Suggest and Use this Great SEO Plugin
All in One SEO Pack: This free SEO plugin for WordPress is an absolute must-have for any blogger who is serious about SEO-ing their posts. You can provide information for a Title tag (yes, it can be completely different from the title that starts off your post); the Description meta tag and the Keyword meta tag. Whatever you enter will be shown in the SERPs. Download it and I promise you’ll love it.
NOTE: Since I use WordPress exclusively for my blogging needs, I’m not able to suggest plugins for other blogs built on the many other platforms available. Sorry …
A Free SEO How-To eBook for Anyone Who Has a Website or Blog
That’s right! Free information and guess what? I wrote this primer and if you’d really like to learn search engine optimization basics to help improve your website or blog’s chances at better rankings, then read it over. I’m told I did a great job providing clear easy-to-implement optimization techniques. So why not download a free copy of my “The SEO Edge: Get Ahead of Your Competition EVERY Time!” right now.
Best of luck in gaining higher rankings with your blog posts.
“Made For AdSense” Websites And Blogs
Should an Internet Marketing Business Be Based Solely on AdSense Income??
I am often asked by those who are relatively new to internet marketing and building their website or blog about how they can generate some passive income via Google’s AdSense ad program. After all, the internet is absolutely full of testimonials from individuals telling you how they make tens-of-thousands of $$-dollars in a DAY and it is just from some AdSense ads on their site. Of course, after you read a few more paragraphs into their pitch … they’re stating that you too can buy their “secrets” for only $XXX.xx (you can fill in the dollar amount).
What is a “Made for AdSense” Website or Blog?
This article will address the issues of “MFA”, or “Made for AdSense” sites. Unlike websites or blogs (such as mine) whose Number #1 main focus is to provide high quality, informative content that is 100% focused on a specific niche (or theme), “MFA” sites do NOT operate under this premise.
“MFA’s” have one purpose … and that’s to generate an income stream from the ads. If you’re not familiar with AdSense, find out more here: Google AdSense Quick Tour. In a nut shell, it is a free program for internet marketers. A maximum of three ad units per web/blog page are allowed under Google’s rules. The ads are targeted to the theme of the content of the web page. Every time one of your visitors clicks on an ad, you receive a pre-determined amount for the click.
The content on an MFA site is basically slapped on each page. These websites or blogs are normally nothing more than a hodge-podge of information which is plastered on as many pages as can be generated. I am SURE you’ve innocently landed on more than one of these types of sites, only to find it was a waste of your time because there wasn’t any information pertaining to what you were searching for. Or if there was any content, it was very sparse and way to generalized.
In order to make a sizeable profit from the ads, you’ve got to generate hundreds and hundreds of posts or pages. For ethical internet marketers, it is a challenge and an on-going task to continually write quality content and to continually add pages to one’s website or blog … or both! (Yes I can relate! lol)
How do the “Made for AdSense” site owners do it? Well guess what? Yes, there are now many “content auto-generator” software programs available for tidy sums that claim to be able to generate all the content you can shake a stick at. Oh so perfect for an “MFA” site. Just get out your wallet and off you go.
This Concept May Sound Like an Absolutely Ideal Way to Make Substantial Income … But There is a Big Downside
Actually, putting up MFA sites isn’t a very good idea. Many respected internet marketing gurus will tell you this. I also agree. Here are the main reasons most internet marketers don’t even think twice about creating MFA sites of their own:
- Technically, “MFAs” are outside the guidelines of a “proper” website or blog.
- Search engines don’t take kindly to nor tend to index sites without meaningful content.
- Visitors truly don’t like to arrive at sites that have no value.
- 99% of the web hates MFA sites – search engines, users and webmasters who don’t do those type of sites.
I think #4 sums it up quite well. If you want to rake-it-in with a website or blog created solely for the purpose of cashing in on the revenue generated via AdSense ads, then go for it. There are folks out there doing it. But what it will take to make the so-called “big bucks” will more than likely take a lot of effort and will take a lot of behind the scenes monetary investment. Plus, it will be a very short lived internet experience. It’s just the nature of the beast.
On the Other Hand, aA Site That Has High Quality Content Can Be Quite Profitable With Adsense Ads, Too
As previously mentioned, 99% of “the rest of us” do wish to provide a lot of unique, excellent information on our targeted, themed websites and blogs. We pretty much stick to one area of expertise, and do our best to offer our visitors the information they are looking for. Of course, some of us achieve better results than others. Some of us utilize ethical search engine optimization techniques, know how to write compelling copy that results in the sales conversions that we wish for, and we slowly but surely rise in SERP rankings.
We also find that adding AdSense ads to our sites can be a value-added feature for our visitors. In addition, we might possibly generate some pretty impressive income each month. Over time these ads might become a revenue stream that’s secondary to the purpose of our sites. In this way, we’re creating something of value for our visitors and not wasting our time, nor their time, and we are not filling the search engines with useless swill.
To learn more about what you need to consider in order to earn “passive” AdSense income from your internet marketing website or blog, please read my article: Google AdSense Revenue Basics – Keywords & Traffic Matter
Bottom Line: there are NO shortcuts to making money online! NONE. It’s like any other business, you’ve got to make the plan, work the plan, and tweak as necessary. And like most businesses, it’ll take years of dedicated effort.
