Along with linking, content creation ideas, and promoting and marketing your blog, getting search engine high rankiings, is a very popular request.
Enquiring bloggers want to know.
Search engine optimization (or SEO for short) is potentially a very boring topic. My friend David St. Lawrence, in his wonderful and thoughful Ripples blog, said it made his head hurt.
I can sympathize with David, and with others who feel the same way. SEO is usually presented (and I am guilty too) as a mystery to be guarded. After all, I SEO sites for a living for those who require it too.
For those who simply want the basics, here is a...I hope...not too boring a voyage, aboard the SS SEO.
Internet seekers of websites and information, turn to search engines for help, in supplying the right sources. For simplicity and to avoid confusion, I'll use Google as the stand in for all search engines. Google powers the vast majority of internet searches, so it will do to serve our needs quite nicely.
The web searcher enters words, called keywords in the SEO trade, into the search box. Press enter, and voila, results appear. Why those results, and not others?
Google uses a complicated (and very secret and often changing) mathematical formula, called the Google algorithm. Its purpose is to calculate the most relevant results for a web query.
Algorithm is such a boring word. Who dreamed it up anyway?
For interests sake, I've decided to call it the "Google Beagle"; sniffing out the best results. I hope no one minds.
What does the Beagle look for exactly?
The Beagle looks for keywords on the page, that match or closely match, the ones you entered into the search box. It examines how recently the page was updated. It considers the number and quality of incoming links to the blog or website. Along with about 98 other calculation variables, our trusty Beagle produces the results.
Here is where blogs have a major advantage over static websites.
Blogs are updated regularly. Check.
Blogs have lots of keywords, as bloggers discuss their main topics. Check.
Blogs have tons of incoming links, from related blogs. Check.
It is only natural, that blogs are going to return high placements, in the search engine results. No matter how the Google algorithm.....I mean the Google Beagle....is changed, those three variables will almost always remain important.
They are what a search is all about.
Blogs are ideally suited, to what the search engines, are looking for in a relevant site.
To take advantage of that relevance, you can write more posts about the topics, where people are searching and finding you.
That is not manipulating the search results. In fact, its good marketing for your blog. You are responding to the reader's asking for more information on the topic.
As a bonus, you get to write even more about your favourite subjects. And you thought I was going to make this hard, didn't you!
By writing more posts on the subject, that just happen to have the keywords and their stemmed variations, you are better serving your readers, present and future.
As David St. Lawrence recommends, "just write from the heart", and your keywords will appear on your blog. After all, you are writing what pleases you and your readers.
The Beagle finds your keywords tasty morsels in his dish too.
The keywords will later appear in searches, as they are what the Google Beagle is calculating. (He is a mathematical doggie, after all).
While that approach may not get you to the top of the first page, for all keywords, it will certainly get you ranked a lot higher.
Going for top of the first page seach engine rankings require more complex ideas and techniques, it's true. However, these simple ideas will get you some very high rankings all by themselves.
Painlessly.
Just by doing and writing what you love.
SEO as a fun idea. That's a rarity, isn't it!
I hope that was a nice voyage, with a friendly puppy at your side, over the oceans of search engine optimization.
I hope no one got seasick!
