I can harp on about it all day long about how important it is to search engine optimize your blog, but is it going to get through? Really? Here's hoping for the best, becuase today I am going to teach you the very basics that you need to do in order to make the search engines love your blog.
Before I start off, you are probably wondering why you would want the search engines to love your blog, right? The answer to that question is very straight forward. You see, people still use the search engines to search for stuff. If you rank for the keywords that people are searching for, then you get traffic. The higher you rank, the more traffic that you get.
Of course, there is even more logic in choosing the right keywords, but this in itself is a separate topic worth learning.
Here's How To SEO Your Blog
Before I teach you how to optimize your blog, I need to make a recommendation that you learn how to copy wordpress blogs, so that if the need arises, you can easily implement this across more domains. It is a worthwhile skill to have.
Thankfully, this is fully possible using a variety of plugins for WordPress. There are many available, and as you go through this article, you will see that this is a fairly lengthy task. That's ok. I recommend that you learn how to copy wordpress blogs at this post, as that will make light work of this process in the future.
First, you will need to install All In One SEO Pack. Once installed, you can set custom title tags and description tags for the blog home page, plus each post and page. In order to do this the right way, be sure to include your primary keyword in both fields. This increases relevancy in the search engines, and with some basic sales copy, you can encourage people to click on your site rather than your competitors. I call this, "selling in the search engines".
Dont forget the importance of using a sitemap. You've probably heard people talking about them before, fortunately for you, they are very easy to create with a free plugin called Google XML Sitemaps. This plugin will generate a fully working sitemap, and will submit it to Google, Yahoo and even Bing. Remember however that you will first need to submit the sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools so that they have it on record. This is of huge importance.
The most important factor is the abilit to be able to track and monitor your traffic. This can be done using Google Analytics. To install Google Analytics, you will need to create a profile for your blog, and install the supplied tracking code on your blog. Usually not an easy task, however a free plugin called Google Analyticator makes light work of this. This plugin works using Google's back end authentication server, and automaticaly adds any code needed.
Now, I know that the last point was not specificaly about SEO, but it is equally as important. The ability to measure where your traffic is coming from, and how much traffic you are getting is of huge importance if you want to improve your traffic.
Dont Stop there!
SEO is a very important skill to have. Without it, you will be losing out in the search engines, and may find yourself having to pay for other methods of traffic generation such as PPC, and media buys.
It is with this in mind that you need to consider SEO in your overall strategy. The more you practice, the easier it will become. With the use of the above WordPress plugins, it will all fall into place for you easily enough.
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