Why Blog Optimization Matters

For the sake of this article the assumption that having a successful blog is the focus of its owners and understanding why search engine optimization efforts are required is the mindset herein. While much of the optimization efforts may be automatic and behind the scenes depending upon the CMS (content management system) employed, there are still a number of tips and techniques the blog owner may put into place regardless of the platform they use.

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The number of reasons for people starting and maintaining blogs are probably as many and varied as the number of people with blogs to begin with. Even though no two individuals (or businesses for that matter) may state similar motivations for having a blog, if the time and effort (and money) have been expended, success is a likely sought after outcome.

That which constitutes success is also likely to vary from one blogger to the next. For some having vast numbers of regular readers is the only goal. Others employing use of blogs may be hoping to provide business and customer support. As a result of making business knowledge and decisions available to current and potential clients, blogging directly can be a wise activity.

Whether there is direct ecommerce involved, or an indirect branding campaign at the heart of the blog, it is clearly important to the business or site owner for the blog to reach as wide or targeted audience as possible.

The way to do this is by taking the time to get ones blog optimized. Some of the easiest ways to do this are to choose mature CMS applications which have much of the SEO work already coded into their pages. Systems like Blogger and WordPress have focused on developing best practices, for search optimized pages, from the very beginning of their existence. Using these types of systems will automatically provide better search indexing results with no additional effort on the part of the blogger.

Once a quality CMS is in place, there are some techniques the blogger can use to increase the effectiveness of the content they are publishing on their blogs. One is to pay particular attention to the keywords which a blog post focuses on. Though this can be easier said than done, if possible limit the topics to one or two related keyword phrases. This will tell the search engines precisely what the content is about and should help increase the chances that the post is going to appear on the search engine results page for a specific keyword search.

Using images not only enhances the reader experience, but also provides the search engine with additional information about the content on the page. Be sure to use the alt attribute of the image tag to share with the search engine what the image looks like. Using the primary or secondary keyword in the alt description is also a good SEO technique.

Other than using a blog as a private diary, optimizing its pages for maximum potential traffic should matter to anyone who is putting the time and effort to blog at all. Search engines are indexing content faster all the time, and with proper use of SEO techniques, one should be able to get their blog content ranked very high. The further up the index pages ones blog posts are found, the more traffic, generally, they are able to redirect to their blog sites.

This article was written by Kevin Devoto.  Kevin Devoto is an entrepreneur turned investor.