Seo Your Blog Without Confusing Your Readers
Posted on by Ryan Deiss in Search Engine Optimization
I’ll pass you guys off to our Director of Social Media Strategies for his last post from Blog World Expo 2010. Be sure to check first post here and his second post here….
Several panelists and keynote speakers touched on the topic of how to effectively apply SEO strategies to blog posts. They all agree that, as in most cases, content is king.
What does this mean for blogging and SEO?
The quality and readability of your blog content should never bow it’s knee to SEO!
Still, SEO is a vital component of blogging… What you should seek to avoid is allowing your SEO tactics make your blog content confusing or hard to read. Ultimately your most important readers are humans, and not Google bots.
Too often bloggers will try so hard to chock their blogs full of huge and confusing keywords in order to get search to notice it. Ironically, if no one is reading those mechanical posts, Google won’t care so much.
So, blog your best first, then go back with SEO. SEO cannot be your starting point if you’re actually looking to write inspired, readable content.
Once you’ve written an awesome blog, go back and do the following:
- Make your H1 tag compelling to readers but make sure your Title tag is free of literary features and stick to the keywords so search engines can actually figure out what your post is about.
- Pick at least one place in your post to link to another relevant site or post.
- Pick at least one relevant page with in your blog site to link to get readers seeing more and to get more links to yourself.
- Use at least one relevant image and make sure you tag it with the appropriate keywords so Google can see that you have some awesome content.
After you’ve finished you’re basic SEOing on the post, there is still a lot more you can do to increase the SEO power of your post:
- Identify your main keywords and find other relevant posts on the topic. Then go comment on their posts and link back to your site. Don’t stress too much over whether or not they’re do follow blog, at the very least your creating relationships with other like minded bloggers.
- To boost interaction on your post and the amount of links, always make it a top priority to approve and respond to comments quickly. This will show people that you actually care about what they say and that you want them to keep coming back. In the end the people you engage with will give you more links in the future!
Things that are tracked are proven to improve more and perform better, so make sure you are measuring your results:
- Invest in social media analytics so you can monitor the effect your blog post is having. Cheap options like ViralHeat or more expensive ones like SpredFast will give you a lot of valuable information. Services like these will tell you everything that happens in social media with your blog posts. Identify your current performance level and aim to beat it!
- Monitoring your social media interaction will allow you to foster your blog conversation outside of your blog. Hook yourself up with Hootsuite or Seesmic so that you can see when anyone says something about your post, postivie or negative.
Devoting the extra hour to get these things done for you blog will help your awesome blog post get the coverage it deserves.
You have any more tips to add to this or any examples of how you’ve used similar tactics? Comment Below!
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John Champion
26. Nov, 2010
Thanks Again Ryan,
I always find quality content on your site! I also utilize most of what you said so the extra info is going to help loads!!!
Thanks again!
JC
strength training for wrestling
25. Nov, 2010
I haven’t invested in social media analytics yet, but I can definitely see the importance of having that data after reading this. I use Facebook to drive traffic to my blog but, with everything, the more I know how effective it is in doing so, the better off I’ll be. Thanks for the great tips Ryan!
Dating Advice For Dating.com
17. Nov, 2010
Great advice, I am saddened to see people who have a blog packed with SEO tactics and they inevitably become unreadable or annoying to read.
ChrisAzzari
29. Oct, 2010
Yeah if you read over your own post and have to think twice about how others would feel then get read of it. If you have a good reading base, get those people reading and interacting ie “linking to it” then down the road you can login and tweak some more SEO things to your liking.
Ryan Deiss
04. Nov, 2010
@ChrisAzzari, well said. let the post seo itself, right? once it has some traction, supe it up a bit!
Geneva - Miami Blog
26. Oct, 2010
Thanks for the tips – I’ll be sure to incorporate them into my Miami News blog. Do you have any input on how to monetize it? I really would like to make it something special, but can’t seem to find an angle.
Ryan Deiss
04. Nov, 2010
@Geneva – Miami Blog, wish i had a magic bullet for you, but every blog has different hurdles to acheive monetization. i’d suggest following guys like shoemoney on blog monetization tactics…
Justice Wordlaw
23. Oct, 2010
I really liked this post and how you explained on that you need to just be yourself and write out your blog posts before you become an “google bot” which I have noticed a lot of bloggers do. I never knew about the ViralHeat? What does that exactly do?
Ryan Deiss
04. Nov, 2010
@Justice Wordlaw, viralheat is one of many softwares that do social media analytics to tell you what’s being said about you so you know when to put out fires and when to stoke them
Blaine Moore
22. Oct, 2010
Good tips, and is what I try to do with my blog. I’ve seen some good results with commenting at other blogger’s sites and making sure I approve and respond to comments on my own site quickly.
Love the PC Weenies cartoon, too…big fan of Krishna’s work.
Ryan Deiss
04. Nov, 2010
@Blaine Moore, sounds like we’re on the same page!