Any serious blogger will tell you the importance of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), there’s actually a number of simple things you can do if you want your article to be more search engine friendly .

• If you are using WordPress, download the All in One SEO Pack. This is actually my favorite WordPress plugin and it has helped my blog out tremendously. This neat little plugin allows you to modify your blog and current post’s title, description, keywords and title format.

• Check your keyword density, make sure the keyword target is not too repetitive or else the search engine will see this as keyword spamming and they will drop you like a bad habit! To verify the density of your keyword go to www.seochat.com, click on Keyword Density on the left hand side, you’ll be prompted to type in your url, then select 1, 2, or 3 keywords depending on your keyword and hit analyze. This will give you a list of keywords found on your page or current post. Under density, a good rule of thumb is to stay between 2.00% - 2.50%. If you are under 2.00% then you need to add more keyword, if you are above 2.50% you will need to decrease your keyword amount.

• Make sure your keyword target appears in the title heading of your post, for example if your keyword you are optimizing for is “web development“, then make sure you use the phrase “web development” in your current post title.

• Don’t forget your heading tag, use the h2 tag to emphasize your keyword target.

• If possible, link to previous posts within your blog. Bloggers fail to realize that these in house links are just as beneficial as outbound links, don’t over do it though, I find that 1 link to a previous post should be enough. The search engines will give you a nice pat on the back for that one!

• Find a free site analyzer online, there are thousands of them on Google. The one I like to use is www.creatingonline.com. Their analyzer tool will actually tell you what you need to do to improve your keyword density, and it will also let you know what your current load time is.

• Lastly, I’ve been reading up on commenting on blogs that have disabled the “nofollow” function. Now I’m not sure how effective this is but I will sure give it a try to see if it helps out my blog at all.

If you follow these simple steps, your blog post should rank higher than usual within the search engines. If you know any other SEO tips/tricks please share it here.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 17th, 2008 at 11:23 pm and is filed under SEO, Web Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.