Optimizing your blog for Google search is crucial to your blog’s success. To get your blog before a wide enough audience to ensure that success, you need page-one placement on Google ranking. Here are five tips top experts agree will give you a leg up in your climb to top-placement in Google search results:

SEO

1. Use appropriate keywords—and use them appropriately.

Keyword research can help you improve your Google ranking. It can also help searchers locate your content. One way to find out what phrases people are using to search for your content is to do your own test Google search. As you begin typing in the search terms that are relevant to your blog, you’ll notice various auto-fill suggestions come up. These suggestions indicate the search strings people are actually using to search for content related to yours. Use these phrases as your keywords. You can also use tools such as the Google AdWords keyword tool to find keywords relevant to your blog.

Remember to write your content for people, though, and not for search engines. And never keyword stuff. Google is growing ever more sophisticated and will penalize you for these indiscretions.

2. Use descriptive titles for posts and images, and match your keywords.

While clever titles with double meanings may sound creative, they aren’t very search-engine friendly. Try to be as literal as possible in titling your posts, and use matching keywords in post and image titles, as well as in the posts themselves. When all three match, keyword relevance grows.

3. Attract high-quality backlinks.

Some ways to do this:

  • Guest post on high-authority blogs in your niche and include a link back to your  blog in your bio.
  • Leave substantive comments on well-respected blogs that haven’t made their links no-follow.
  • Add high-quality blogs to your blog roll. If your blog is also high-quality,      many bloggers will reciprocate without even being asked. But, ask if you      must.
  • Post articles to the free article sites, linking them back to your blog.

4. Use internal linking—and use it wisely.

Link to other relevant posts on your blog. Internal linking can be valuable to your blog’s SEO, but only if the linked-to posts are relevant to the content to which they’re linked. Google’s recent updates have given link relevance even greater importance than before. Here are a few other tips to follow when linking internally:

  • Make sure the anchor text of the link is also relevant to the linked-to content.
  • Always avoid anchor text such as, “here,” “there,” “Click here,” or other similar nondescript phrasing. Such anchor text adds no value or relevance to your links. Always use specific, relevant wording instead.
  • Never use a link-shortening service such as bit.ly to create links for your      blog, and never use URLs that consist only of numbers. Using descriptive      URLs is another way to increase link relevance.
  • Understand that the reason internal links to other relevant blog posts benefit your      site’s SEO is because they are deep links. Deep links (links to specific      pages on a website) are generally more valuable than links to the main domain.
  • Don’t be excessive. It’s neither necessary nor preferable to create a link every      time a keyword appears in your post. Like any other SEO tactic, internal      linking can be overdone, leading Google to assess a penalty.

5. Update your blog frequently.

Google ranking spiders crawl websites that update frequently more often than they do those that update less frequently. That’s why blogs are typically more search-engine friendly than static websites. The more frequently you post, the more opportunities you’ll have to move higher in search results, as more and more of your content is indexed by Google. Always remember that Google pays far more attention to websites that consistently post fresh content.

The more visible you’d like your blog to be, the more important the above five tips will be to your SEO strategy.

About:

Guest post contributed by Peter Nevis, on behalf of Orange Line Online Marketing. Peter contributes to various websites, he’s a marketing expert and enjoys writing articles about SEO & online marketing strategies.

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27 Comments

  • Pradeep, May 26, 2012 @ 11:57 am Reply

    Comments is another factor.
    The more comments we get on our blog the more we will be ranked 😀
    Just guessing 😀

    • Abhi, May 26, 2012 @ 2:07 pm Reply

      Hey Pradeep,

      Thank you for adding your comments.

      I don’t know if you know or not, but I have participated in Blog Engage contest. Would you mind giving me a hand by sharing and adding your comments there.

      Here;s the link: http://www.blogengage.com/blogger/10-reasons-why-i-will-not-accept-your-guest-post/

      • Pradeep, May 26, 2012 @ 4:34 pm Reply

        Yes I know about the post. How Did I Get 400+ Comments On My First Guest Post Is It?
        Well I didn’t comment on it but now I am going to. 😀

        • Abhi, May 26, 2012 @ 5:00 pm Reply

          You could have open the link before commenting again. It is something else. I already won that contest. And I asked you to add your comments on that link. 🙂

  • Shalu Sharma, May 26, 2012 @ 1:08 pm Reply

    Internal linking is something that I have not done properly. I need to do this. Guest blogging is a good one, it will provide quality back links to your blog. Thank you for this informational post.

  • Bharat Chowdary, May 26, 2012 @ 3:15 pm Reply

    Internal linking of your articles is one of the best SEO strategies. It not only increases page views but also reduces the bounce rate. Thanks for the ultimate tips.

  • Trung Nguyen, May 27, 2012 @ 5:32 pm Reply

    We should build high quality backlinks for our blog to get high ranking on search engines, nice post

    • Abhi, May 28, 2012 @ 11:10 am Reply

      Hey Trung,

      Are you sure about that. You know, when I was in my first contest I made around 800 high quality do follow back links to my site in one and a half month. Do you think my current ranking is the effect of those back links?

      • Trung Nguyen, May 28, 2012 @ 12:12 pm Reply

        That’s exactly, however, your ranking is base on which keyword you wanted and how many backlinks you got for the post that you want to get high ranking for the keyword.

  • Waqas Ahmed, May 28, 2012 @ 2:27 am Reply

    Nice post Peter Nevis. I am a new born baby in blogging and just start my new blog. I will apply your top 5 SEO tips on my blog and i hope that one day i will be on the first page of Google.

    • Abhi, May 28, 2012 @ 11:16 am Reply

      Hello Waqas Ahmed,

      If you are new to blogging them I am glad to see you over my blog. Let me know if I can help you anywhere.

      You should see all the most commented post, there is a lot to learn.

  • DiTesco, May 28, 2012 @ 2:31 am Reply

    These are outstanding tips and they are very important indeed for effective SEO, however I am surprised that you did not mention anything about “social engagements”. Do you think that submitting articles on “free article sites” are still that effective and better than “social links”, such as Google+, FB and Twitter? IMO, links from free article sites have been somewhat devalued by Panda/Penguin.. Just my two cents

    • Abhi, May 28, 2012 @ 11:00 am Reply

      Hello DiTesco,

      Yup, the writer didn’t mention “Social Engagements” and I am not surprised for that. Because he is not present in the comments of his post even after the reminder I sent him. Now what you would suggest me to do with the guest post?

      But I think, social engagement is another part of blogging which should not be ignored.

      • DiTesco, May 28, 2012 @ 4:55 pm Reply

        Hi Abhi. Hmm, these things happen so no worries. As for what you should do with this post, here’s an idea….

        The tips are great but I do really have my doubts about “free article sites” (well maybe Hubpages, Squidoo and Tumblr are OK) and indeed, social engagements is quite important. So, why not write another post to complement this one 😉

        That would be great fro another post, don’t you think, lol

  • Ammar Ali, May 28, 2012 @ 11:11 am Reply

    I mostly use appropriate keywords—and use them appropriately. and interlink also play important role for me. And also in decreasing bounce rate 😉

    • Abhi, May 28, 2012 @ 10:54 pm Reply

      Hey Ammar,

      I am trying to focusing more on keywords now. Internal linking has worked good for many.

      Good luck for your blog.

  • James Martin, June 1, 2012 @ 4:31 am Reply

    Recently, the most talk about in the market is all about google towards users. This can intriguing at times. Hope such items here will truly help improve our google ranking.

  • Jeet Dholakia, June 5, 2012 @ 9:20 pm Reply

    Well to get good google ranking nowadays it quite an hectic job but the above mentioned tips do work. keyword always plays an important role and how you use them in your post and title also. building backlink is quite important for PR also.

    Thanks for sharing this post.

    • Abhi, June 7, 2012 @ 10:02 am Reply

      Hello Jeet,

      Thank you for adding your thoughts. Yes, making backlinks is good for PR. I made around 700 do follow quality backlinks to my site but still I didn’t get PR update. I was expecting an update.

  • Charles Daniels, June 7, 2012 @ 7:36 am Reply

    Appropriate keyword usage definitely a vital factor. Using them too much can skew your keyword density levels and end your site up in the sandbox. We usually try to stay around 6-8%. Have a level your try and stay around?

  • Aditya, June 13, 2012 @ 4:44 pm Reply

    Keywords are good but the keywords meta tag has lost its essence, I personally think it is only useful for Stumbleupon and Delicious now. However, if you use them too many and too erratically, Google Penguin will chip in with its Iron Fist, so its good that you mentioned that they be used appropriately. Also, the same applies for internal linking, it should follow with the flow of the content.

  • Mohideen, June 14, 2012 @ 11:05 pm Reply

    Internal linking and updating blog which encourage bots to crawl regularly nice tips you have listed Abhi…

  • Imran, June 30, 2012 @ 3:43 pm Reply

    After Google Panda and Penguin updates it is very important to build high quality backlinks.
    I am focusing to build high quality links to rank top.
    Anyways nice tips keep sharing 🙂

    • Rizwan Sultan, July 25, 2012 @ 1:39 am Reply

      Imran I agree google give more importance to Quality instead of quantity but they also give more importance to natural backlinks techniques.

  • Prince, October 1, 2012 @ 8:31 pm Reply

    Helpful post, but about backlinks reciprocal linking is good? Internal links are working preety good for me. And I have a flash games blog so keyword density is 2% at this moment. I need to increase it? and yes also I’ve added my sitemaps to google webmasters 26 of the sites verified another sitemap have 139 links how much time it’ll take to get verified or they can be dismissed?

    -If anyone can answer me this will be a great help.

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