What Everyone Should Know about Blogging for SEO 

I like this headline. Not only does it grab my attention, it also rhymes! More about headlines later on but for now back to the topic at hand. Several clients have recently asked me about creating and maintaining blogs. In response, I've created this amazing article detailing everything you ever wanted to know about blogs. 

Well, that is maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but I will cover the basics of blogging and some tips for promoting your product and service through the blogosphere.  

Why create a blog? For search engine purposes of course! Interested human readers aside, blogs give search engines exactly what they want. Updated, relevant content littered with keyword phrases. From a people perspective, blogs can be a great place to communicate on a more casual level with potential clients and provide a feedback mechanism so they can communicate more easily with you. 

Getting Started

Keeping a blog is as easy as keeping a journal or a diary. “Blog” itself is short for Web Log and is at it's core an online diary. That being said, I wouldn't recommend putting your deepest thoughts on your blog. Keep in mind that everything you write on the Internet, Google sees, and people can find later. Blogs however can be an excellent tool to help promote your product or service. They can help establish a dialog with potential clients and create a feeling of trust. 

There are many systems that will help you create a blog either directly on your own site or on a blog site. Blogger and WordPress are the two most common services and are both free to use but there are many others available. Do some research before you choose your blogging software. Find a blog style that you like and find out which system is being used.  

Next decide whether to host your blog on your own website or on the services website. Most businesses will want to host their blog on their own website simply because the user then will not be redirected when reading. Templates can be changed though to match your websites look and feel so there is little difference between these options. If you host on your website, you'll need to provide your FTP information to the blogging service so the blog can be uploaded automatically. 

If you decide to create the blog on your own site, both Blogger and WordPress have complete instructions on how to incorporate the necessary HTML. The look and feel can perfectly match your pages so visitors won't perceive any outside software involvement in the blog. If you use a web creation program like Dreamweaver, you can take a blank version of one of your pages and dump the blog code into it. Then copy all of the resulting code back into the blogging software. Make sure to make all your links hard (add http://www.mysite.com/images/picture.jpg instead of just /images/picture.jpg) in you HTML. This will ensure that no matter how many levels your blog creates though it's archives, the pages will still work perfectly. Don't forget about background images and links to the rest of your website. This will make sure there are no navigation or presentation issues. Once the necessary additions have been made, it is time to start writing. 

Think Content

The whole point of a blog from a search engine optimization point of view is to create content with keyword phrases. If you've read my basic SEO article, you should have identified the keyword phrases for your site. Now is the time to start using them. Make sure your posts contain as many of them as is reasonably possible while still maintaining good grammar and interesting content. 

It's a good idea to keep a list of keyword phrases in front of you when writing so you can incorporate them when appropriate. This strategy will make sure that when a search engine visits your blog that it will add to your rankings instead of taking away. 

Blogs are not a good place to just copy your white paper information or to create a long advertisement. People read blogs only so long as they are interesting and useful so try to make your blog both. The most popular blogs also incorporate an element of humour or controversy to them. A well written blog will encourage comments from users, which adds even more content which you won't even have to write yourself! 

One of the options when setting up your blog will be whether or not to allow comments. By allowing comments, you encourage this exact kind of participation that will generate search engine friendly text. You can always delete offensive or inappropriate posts if need be but the additional content will  be seen by Google and will help your rankings, whether the visitor happened to like you or not. 

The single most important thing to do is to get in the habit writing in your blog. In today's busy world, this can seem like an arduous chore, but the way to attract readers and potential customers is regular updates with interesting and relevant content. 

Permalinks

Blogs put the most recent entries at the top of the page. As more posts get added, the others get pushed down the page. After certain period of time, usually one month, they then get moved into the archives. You should notice your archive listings at the bottom of your blog. This is where previous posts can be accessed.  

When setting up the technical options for your blog, make sure the Permalink option is active. This function provides a hard link to all your posts as they move into the archive. This is where the other search engine optimization feature of blogs comes into play. The permanent version of your posts is where other bloggers and webmaster may link to if they find the content interesting enough. If your blog doesn't have visible permanent links, you won't get this links and your posts will more or less vanish. See further in this article for more information about using your blog to get links. From a SEO point of view, links are of significant value and will prop your site up in the search engines. 

Labels

Labels are used as a topic by topic style of  organization for your blog. Essentially labels are tags that you can use to identify the topics of your posts so that visitors can check out your archives by topic rather than simply by date. When you are actually writing your blog, there will be an option to apply one or more labels. 

Once you done writing your posting, select a few of relevant topic names and put them in the labels area. As you create more entries, you will notice that the blogging software you are using will store these labels so you can reuse them. Try to use your existing labels as every new label you add will add a new category to your directory. Keep labels simple, clear and relevant so that visitors will be able to find topics of interest to them easily. 

Feed Me!

One the coolest features of blogs is that they can be designed to create feeds. Feeds are designed to send out new content that is added to your blog to interested subscribers as it happens so that visitors don't have to be constantly checking your site for updates.  

The information can be sent out via email or through a feed aggregator. There are many types of aggregators available including customized home pages like MyYahoo or MyMSN, modern web browsers or a specialized desktop or web-based feed reading programs. 

Feeds will send information in XML. XML stands for Extensible Markup Language and is essentially a universal language that different platforms and programs can interpret. This allows the text to be shared across various systems that don't normally have the ability to talk to each other. There are a few different versions of XML feeds used by blogs and websites, the most common being RSS (Really Simple Syndication). 

RSS feeds are what is known as presentation-independent because they provide no format. The information in an XML feed can be shown to the user in almost any way without changing the actual content. That is why there are so many programs and software services that blog readers can use to subscribe to feeds.  

The big advantage of an RSS feed is that once people have subscribed in whatever format they desire, there is no need to return to the blog all the time to check for new postings. The updates are delivered automatically. Most visitors will want to subscribe to your feed in either email and RSS formats. While serious sufers will be very happy using feeds, more average people will want email. 

Submit your blog

If you write your blog using one of the larger blogging services, your posts will automatically be submitted to the major search engines and blog portals for inclusion. You can manually submit to Google's Blog Search via a submission page here. 

This is a critical issue to get your newly created blog postings indexed in the major search engines as quickly as possible. Besides helping to boost your regular search engine rankings, your blog may now appear in specific vertical blog searches. There are specific search portals that can return results only from blogs, like Google's Blog Search.  

Another way to get indexed is to make sure there is a link to your blog on your home or main page as well as to submit an updated XML sitemap to Google via their webmaster tools. For more information on how to do this, see this Google post. 

You may also want to submit your blog to a few other blog specific sites. One of the most popular currently is Technorati. Technorati is heavily used by many people to search, bookmark and collect new posts from their favorite blogs. You will want to create an account and identifying your blog as your own. You can then also tag your blog with labels. These tags will identify the categories and topics your blog should appear under and help users who are looking for information about the topics you are discussing. 

Sites like Technorati come and go all the time so make sure to stay as up to date as possible by reading other popular blogs and seeing where they are listed. If there aren't specific details on the blog itself, you can find out by typing in a phrase from the blog into Google and seeing what other sites that phrase appears in. 

Pinging doesn't hurt as much as it sounds

Pinging is a term that refers to sending out a short message telling the various search engines and blog specific sites that you have updated your blog with a new entry.  Pinging the major search engines is usually automatic if you're using a major blogging software. Some more specific sites though may require a manual ping. 

For the more geeky among us, many blog websites and search engines can be pinged automatically by either including specific HTML code in your blog or through an API (Application Programming Interface). For the average joe blogger using Blogger or WordPress, this pinging process is unnecessary as these systems will ping the search engines whenever you update your blog. If you are using an XML sitemap system, which you most definitely should be, resubmitting your sitemap will have the same effect as a ping. 

Mastering the art of the (link) Bait

Shockingly, I wasn't the first person to come up with that joke. 

Once you have the technical issues dealt with, the first thing that becomes obvious is that blogging has become a more casual form of communication as compared to your average commercial website information page. The current best way to build an audience for your blog is to make the postings either very useful, very funny or preferably both. When you have an interesting and funny blog, it becomes what has now called Link Bait. 

Link baiting by definition is simply the process of creating great positngs that people will want to create links to on their own blogs or websites. Links are a critical component of search engine optimization. Check out the search engine optimization article if you're not sure how important linking is. Link baiting with your blog is one of the best ways to develop your inbound links. 

Readers may see your blog for the first time through your website or through a blog search. In either case, as well as in the case of subscribers, the first thing they will see is your particular postings title or headline. The headline must grab their attention. The title of your posts is the metaphoric hook for link bait. Some of the most well known blogs take their headline ideas from direct marketing. Copyblogger, a great blog itself about corporate blogging practices which I highly recommend, has a great posting for creating catchy headlines here. 

First past the post

After your headline, your blog copy is what will capture readers, turn them into subscribers and eventually into customers. While this particular article probably won't leave you laughing in the aisles, a great blog post will. If you need some posting ideas, check out your competitor's blogs. Now it's quite possible your competitors haven't read this article and their blog might suck, so be sure to also subscribe to a variety of popular blogs. You can find very well known blogs on the main pages of Technorati, Blogger and WordPress. By reading popular blogs, and subscribing to them, you will have a much better idea what style works in blogs and you may also generate some ideas for your own postings. While you're at it, subscribe to my blog! I promise I'll be funny and interesting, or at least send some links to people who are funny and interesting. 

While the mainstay of search engine optimization and in fact most search engine marketing in general is text, also consider adding pictures, video or audio (podcasts) to your blog. The more variety of media available to your visitors, the better for both your them and search engines. Since Google gave us universal search, non-text content is starting to become ranked within the main search results. If you have a great video on your blog, it can greatly enhance your rankings. If you don't believe me, check out the Will it Blend series. By having both great textual content that uses your keyword phrases and a variety of media on your blog, your chances of appearing higher in the results are much greater. 

Just Do It

More than just a Nike slogan, the main rule for blogging is to just do it. Add posts as regularly as possible and use keyword phrases that relate to the products or services you offer on your website. Search engines show stronger results for your entire site, not just your blog, and visitors will start to become engaged with your company. Engaged readers are much easier sell to than passers by.