Optimize Your Blog for the Search Engines

If you're looking for exposure for your blog, you really have to think about getting it listed high in the search engine results pages. Employing some search engine optimization techniques, just as you would for any web page, can help you out greatly in that regard.

Here's a short list of things to keep in mind.

Use Key Words in Your Blog Name. Just as you should try to select a web site domain name using some key words, pick a name for your blog that utilizes your primary key words or key phrase in the blog title, and the URL.

Use Key Words in Your Blog Entry Titles. Ditto what was said above. Try to work your and phrases into the titles of your blog entries as often as you can. Vary your entries, but try to keep them woven around a "theme".

Use Key Words on the page, and in link text. Once again, use the body of your blog entries to weave in your key words. Many experts think that the ideal distribution for key words on your page has an "hourglass" shape. More key words at the top and bottom of the page, fewer in the middle. I honestly don't know if that's correct or not, but it's commonly considered correct. It is also true that you'll get better rankings from the search engines if you use key words in the text of your outgoing links.

Update Frequently. In addition to the fact the pages are clean, and free of extraneous HTML, javascript, images, and the like, blogs are ideal "spider food" in part because the content changes frequently. The more you update, the more often the spiders will come back. Many experts believe that frequently changed content leads to higher search engine results rankings, and the evidence strongly appears to bear them out.

Archive Frequently. The more frequently you archive, the more pages your blog will have. More pages means that the search engines perceive it as having more content. Also, set yourself up so that you have only the one or two most current entries showing up on the index page, and all the rest are archived, or linked from a list of "recent entries". Again, this gives you more pages, and more keyword-rich links from your blog's index page.

Seek Out Link Exchanges and Directory Listings. Lots of bloggers are willing to exchange links with relevant blogs, which is great for your "link popularity" and "link reputation" in the eyes of the search engines. Also, submit to as many directories as you can find, following the same principle.

Activate your RSS feed. This is another way for both human readers, and search engine spiders, to find you. List your RSS feed in as many directories as you have time to. Don't forget to "ping" the major Blog and RSS directories after every new post.

Search engines love blogs, because they are content-rich, and contain few images, extraneous HTML, javascript, flash, and other nuisances. By following some simple guidelines, you can make your blog pages even more attractive to the search engines.

Properly optimized, blog pages can get better results in the search engines than can traditional web pages and web sites, and can usually get indexed and listed dramatically more quickly than regular web pages.