35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 10: 6 Easy SEO tips for bloggers

Linzé's Google Result

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is the technique used for websites, and blogs, to be found by Google or any of the other search engines. While most people know about keywords, it is one of many algorithms used by the search engines to find your blog and list it on the results page if someone searched for something.

For authors the one thing that we want others to see is our books, isn't it? Whether the searcher types in the title you want yours to be listed first. Problem is that book titles are far from unique.

With almost two hundred thousand books being published every year (yep, it is that many and growing!) the probability of duplicated titles are getting higher and higher. So if you want to have a high ranking, you have to the be keyword. Sounds weird I know, but you are your brand and unless you are writing one book and one book only, the title is not going help you much. Unless you think of something completely new and catchy - which of course, I hope you do - your name is the only keyword that will help with search engines.

Here are some easy SEO tips for bloggers to get going:

1. Your blog has a theme. Make sure the majority of your posts are about this theme. I would say >90% of posts should be about the theme your chose for your blog.
2. Plan your post content and use the keyword a maximum of five times in a sentence that make sense to the reader. The shorter the post, the fewer the number of keyword sentences. In a post of 500 words, 5 times could work. In a short post of 300 words or less, don't use it more than 3 times. If you do more, it will only irritate your reader.
3. Use the keyword in the title of the post.
4. Use the keyword in the first paragraph of your post.
5. If you use a graphic image with the post, make sure to add its metatags too, since the web crawlers cannot see images, only recognise the text associated with it.
6. Don't use your name all over, use it to tag book covers. The images are just as important as the text on your blog.

Is there more to SEO for bloggers? Yes, there are many ways to help your blog to be visible and gain a high ranking in a search, but using keywords and metatags is an easy way to start and not technically challenging for even the most inexperienced blogger.

See you tomorrow for the first of my Follow Me posts - I am on my way to #ROSACon2015

If you want to see what the other participants are blogging about, you can find their blogs here. Why not pop on over and leave a comment?