About Blogs

A blog (a contraction of the term "web log") is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (Art blog), photographs (photoblog), videos (Video blogging), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcasting). Microblogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts.

If you’re publishing a business blog that serves some kind of marketing purpose (and I can assume you are, since you’re here on this site), search engine optimization is very important to you. At least it should be. Blog SEO is a technique you can use to increase the number of visitors to your business blog. This in turn can lead to more exposure, awareness, business leads, and even direct sales.

Search engine optimization is important for other business reasons as well. If you go through the proper SEO steps to optimize your blog, you’ll also be doing some valuable research along the way. You’ll conduct keyword research to find out how your potential customers are using the search engines. This gives you some insight into their thought process, and it also helps you broaden your content / publishing scope.

As part of a search engine optimization process, you should also research other websites in your niche, to see what’s out there in the way of partnerships and competition. This is another SEO technique that’s good for general business purposes as well.

So after all this, I think you can clearly see why search engine optimization is important for business bloggers. The next question is, how do you achieve it? Here’s your answer…

Here’s what I’ve learned about search engine optimization for blogs in that time. If you’re looking for ways to improve your rankings the right way (without being hit with a Google penalty), here’s how to do it:

•Let’s start at the beginning and assume you’re starting a blog from scratch, and that you need to register a domain name. You should ignore all of the “expert” advice that tells you to get a domain name with keywords in it for SEO purposes. This is bad business. Search engines are the last thing you should consider when choosing your domain. You should consider business branding and memorability when choosing a website domain name — but not search engine optimization.

•If you haven’t done so already, conduct a thorough round of keyword research before you start blogging. This will help you build a content plan and create purposeful (instead of random) content. Depending on the type of business you are in, this process might take a couple hours or a couple of days. But it’s important for proper search engine optimization, among other things, so do it!

•Start publishing new content on a regular basis. If you manage one new blog post every week, that’s a great place to start. If you can blog several times a week, that’s even better. Here are some 15 blog entry ideas to keep you going. You can find some more ideas here.

•When creating your blog posts, refer back to (A) your list of key phrases and (B) the content plan you developed from that list. When you write a blog entry for the first time, forget about the search engines and write for people — i.e., your real audience. When you’re done with the post, go back through and optimize the entry for search engine visibility.

•When you are optimizing your blog entries, pay particular attention to the title you create for each post. Your blogging program will use the title you create for the HTML title tag as well, and this is important for search engine optimization and visibility. Put keywords in your titles, and make them descriptive and relevant to the post that follows. Here are some tips on adjusting WordPress title tags for SEO purposes. You can make similar adjustments in Blogger, TypePad or any other blog program.