What is Blogging and SEO?
During the past decade, the popularity of blogging has been on the rise. Blogging is the term used for creating a blog, which is essentially a personal journal shared with the world on the internet. Blogs can be run by a single person or a large corporation. The purpose of a blog can also vary. Some blogs are about the daily life or interests of an individual, while others are used to raise awareness about certain political issues. For personal blogs used to keep the individual’s family up to date on their daily activities, SEO, or search engine optimization, may not be of importance. However, for bloggers or companies who want their blog to have a lot of attention, for whatever reason, SEO is very important. SEO are the components that search engines such as Google and Yahoo! use to determine where to rank their displayed search results when a keyword is searched. Two of the key components that affect a blog’s SEO, or any webpage’s for that matter, is keyword use and links. Therefore, if a blogger wants their blog to appear higher up in the search results, it’s very important that they utilize keywords and links within their blog.
Keyword Density
Keywords are an important part of SEO. If the keyword appears constantly throughout the blog, the search engine can assume that the blog is about this certain keyword. For instance, if you blogged about “Republican primaries”, you would want this keyword in the title of the blog and at least 5% word density throughout each blog (this means that the term “presidential primaries” accounts for 5% of all words in the post). This tactic will increase the SEO of your blog so that when someone searches “Republican primaries”, your blog will have a better chance of ranking higher in the search results (and therefore, more likely to be read). However, do not overkill the use of keywords. This will drive away potential readers. Have keywords account for at most 5% of all words. Also, do not install invisible keyword text into your blog, Google has threatened to remove all website and blogs from their search engine if this is found.
Links
Search engines will also view links to your blog as a recommendation. Therefore, having links that go back to your blog will help increase your blog’s SEO. Create a link to the blog in the signature of your forum posts and share links to your blog on websites. Encourage readers to recommend your blog via link on their Facebook pages and related blogs as well. If you link your blog from another blog or website make sure to link on a keyword relevant to your blog. For example, using the Republican primary analogy, be sure to link that keyword to your blog. Linking relevant keywords to your blog will also help with SEO. Although it may be tempting, do not buy links or pay people to link to your blog, if where they’re linking from is irrelevant to your blogs’ content. Although these tactics may increase your SEO for a short while, they will ultimately hinder your blog’s reputation, and thus SEO.
Closing Thoughts
Blogging has become a fantastic way for internet users to share their lives, ideas and opinions with the virtual world. Some bloggers, whether they be individuals or corporations, want to have their blogs appear high in search results to drive traffic to their website. In order to do this, bloggers must utilize SEO strategies such as keywords and links. Although bloggers can use these strategies to increase their SEO, they must not abuse them, by creating invisible keywords or buying links. Although this may increase the SEO of the blog for a short while, it will hinder the reputation and SEO of the blog in the long run.
