1. Select Your Keywords and Keyword Phrases Choose the keywords and keyword phrases you want your blog post to rank high for on the Google search engine results page. For example, I want my blog post to rank high for the term, "blog ranked high on Google." Currently there are approximately 286,000 pages using this term so I'll have to do everything in my power to compete with these web pages to get my blog post on the first page of the Google results page for that term.
My keyword phrase also includes other keyword phrases like, "ranked high on Google" with about 310,000 competing pages and "high on Google" with over 71 million competing pages. Getting to the first page for these terms would be a bonus.
2. Use Your Keywords in Your Blog Title Google pays very close attention to the words and phrases you use in your blog title. Notice how I used the term, "blog ranked high on Google" in the title of this article. It's important to use your keyword phrase in your blog title if you want to rank high for that phrase on the Google results page.
Another reason you want to use your keyword phrase in your blog title is to give your reader an immediate understanding as to what your blog post is about. If your blog is listed at the top of the search engine results page for your keyword phrase but no one reads it, it's of no value. Use a title that will cause people to click through to your blog post.
The New York Times creates two different titles for their articles. They use a catchy, creative or humorous title for their newspaper, and a keyword specific title for the articles and blogs they post to the Internet. They do this because people looking for jokes about the eating habits of nuns generally go to a search engine and type, "jokes about the eating habits of nuns," not "Nuns, Buns and Puns."
3. Use Your Keywords in Your Blog Text Notice how the keyword phrase, "blog ranked high on Google," is used throughout this blog post. Google pays attention to the text on a blog in order to understand what the blog post is about. Once Google comprehends the content of the blog post, it will categorize the blog based on that information. By using your keyword phrase in your text, both Google and your readers can quickly understand what your blog post is about, allowing Google to accurately categorize your blog making it easy for your clients to find.
In the past, search engine consultants encouraged writers to use their keyword phrase in the first 25 words of their text and again in the last sentence. Today, the search engines don't seem to pay as much attention to word placement, but reader's do.
If your article is about your keyword phrase, it's a good idea to use it in the first and last sentence because it helps your reader quickly know what your blog post is about. It's also a good idea to use your keyword phrase in the first sentence because that is the text that is most likely to show in the description text on the search results page.
4. Link To Your Blog With Keyword Rich Anchor Text Get as many one-way links leading back to your blog post as possible from as many quality blogs and websites as you can. Do your best to insure that the text people click on to get back to your site includes your keywords and keyword phrases. This is known in Internet marketing circles as anchor text.
In this example I want the anchor text leading back to my blog post to have the keyword phrase, "blog ranked high on Google," as the clickable text. The clickable text is the means by which all of those other web sites and blogs tell Google what your blog post is about.
Google provides far more weight to the theme of your blog post based on the quality and size of the sites linking back to your blog than the text on your blog. For example, if you do a Google search for the term, "click here," you will be taken to the Adobe Reader download web page. It's interesting to note the term "click here" doesn't appear anywhere on that page. The reason the Adobe Reader download page comes up first for this term is because there are millions of other sites that use the anchor text, "click here," to direct people to the Adobe Reader download page.
There are two wonderful ways to get keyword rich anchor text directing people back to your blog post. The first is to write and submit an article about your blog post to other web site and blog owners who will upload your article to their site. In return those web site and blog owners will provide you with a keyword rich anchor text link from your article back to your blog. They get great content for their web site and you get a valuable one-way link back to your blog post.
The second way is to encourage other blog owners to write about your blog post. In doing so, they are very likely to use your blog title as the anchor text leading readers back to your post. This is another reason why it's so important to use your keyword phrase in your blog title.
5. Ask Your Readers To Digg Your Blog Post Ask your readers to tell the rest of the world about your blog post by submitting it to one of the social bookmarking sites. They include DIGG, Stumble, Blink and many others. If the title of your blog post includes your keyword phrase, it is likely that this is how your readers will describe your blog post to the social bookmarking sites. This helps Google decide where to rank your site on the search results page.
6. Blog On A Community Site Recognized Expert, Active Rain, and Christian Blog are all examples of niche community blog sites. Recognized Expert is a site for marketing experts, Active Rain is for real estate professionals and the Christian blog is for, you guessed it, Christians. These niche sites have tons of traffic along with the undivided attention of Google and the other search engines.
If you're a marketing expert for example, blogging on a site like Recognized Expert will push your blog post to the top of the search results page in a matter of hours. That's a huge reason to blog on a community site. If you wrote the same content on your own blog, it may take months to be seen by Google, and you may never get close to the first page for your keyword phrase.
Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and the other search engines explore busy community sites for new content every few minutes. On the other hand, they visit newer and smaller sites every few months. If you're serious about generating business from blogging, consider blogging on a topic specific community site.
Apply these six steps to every blog post you write, and you will quickly create a huge following of clients and potential clients. This is how the pro bloggers get their blogs ranked high on Google.
The main objective of the search engines is to rank the sites with the best and most content at the top of their results pages. So you need well-written content, and a lot of it. And when you have great content, other sites naturally want to link to you to make them look better. That helps your PageRank. When your PageRank increases, your site's value increases. And that equals a higher spot in the search engine ranks.
To get a lot of content, just add to your site a little bit every day or every week. Plus the search spiders like sites that are frequently updated. An update could be as simple as tweaking your content, but adding fresh content is best.
You want to make sure your content has a major theme (your area of expertise) to tie it all together. This is becoming an important factor for the search engines and just makes sense from a business perspective anyway. The best way to choose a theme is to choose a keyword and write an article that revolves around that word or phrase. Then by including that keyword in various places throughout your article, you are optimizing your site in the process of creating great content.
In addition to utilizing keywords, all the content on your site should relate to your niche. Your pages should contain articles with 200-500 words, and you want as many of these pages as possible with cross-links so users can easily navigate your site.
If your site includes images, you need content for these as well. The spiders search this ALT text, so including keywords here is important. By properly labeling your images, you can also get yourself ranked in Google's database of images (Google Image Search). The more chances you have to be ranked in more places, the more traffic you'll bring to your site.
While images are acceptable and can help your rank when labeled appropriately, flash content can hurt you. It may look good, but the spiders dislike java script and flash. A little flash is okay; a lot makes the spiders unhappy. It's not the kind of thing they like to crawl over.
How fast your page loads is another consideration. With a simple, fast site, the search engines can easily spider your page. Visitors also like pages that load fast. If your site takes more than a few seconds to load, you'll lose potential customers.
Both Bob Sommers & are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Bob Sommers has sinced written about articles on various topics from Blogging, Writing and Computers and The Internet. Bob Sommers is the host of the Recognized Expert on Maui. Listen to Bob and other marketing experts talk about how to position yourself as the expert by. Bob Sommers's top article generates over 5400 views. to your Favourites.
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