Do you do the whole SEO type thing?

[GolfOscarLimaDelta]

I'm new to this and wondering if most people do things to make their blog easier to find or rate higher in searches.

I don't really get the SEO stuff other then the basics. I don't think I am blogging for traffic at the moment so I've not put any thought into that kind of thing. I've just read about someone 'submitting to google' and don't get that at all.

Is it an important part of what you write or do to promote yourself?

I suppose it's something I'll look into as I learn more about the blogging world - just wondering really!

[2under2blog]

I don't know about anyone else but I mainly blog to help other people. My situation is one that I know people want/need advice and empathy about. I created my blog because I couldn't find a strong enough resource.

I care about reaching those people if I can, traffic is only important to me if it's the right hits.

SEO is a funny old game in that there are countless things you can do to tweak here and there. But fundamentally, content is king. If you write an interesting blog that's useful to others, that's the most important thing.

In theory, anyway. I think (hope!) my blog (www.2under2.co.uk) is useful but I'm struggling to get much recognition from Google.

[notanaxemurderer]

SEO is a tricky one, and it's an inexact science so it's always changing. 2under2 is right about content being king though - the top tenet of SEO is unique content, posted regularly.

Also, Google has changed its algorithm (sp?) recently and penalised people who have used too many keywords on their site. (This won't apply to you as you will have a more 'organic' blog as opposed to those who are deliberately flooding their sites with keywords to get noticed). Now the idea is that you should create backlinks to your blog. So make sure you comment on other people's blogs and websites, leaving a link to your blog that can be followed. Google takes notice of all external links to your site and ranks you in order of importance according to these (as well as the content, of course).

[notanaxemurderer]

2under2 I really like your blog!

[2under2blog]

notanaxemurdered - thank you so much! That means a lot :)

[2under2blog]

*murderer

[jemjabella]

Google has changed its algorithm (sp?) recently and penalised people who have used too many keywords on their site.

This isn't really true... for starters, Google doesn't have just one "algorithm" and their recent publicised updates are a little more in depth than penalising keyword use.

Blog regularly, don't link to dodgy/untrustworthy sites, get people to link to you. Bob's your uncle. (Re: commenting - no point doing it to improve ranking as all the major blogging systems nofollow comment links.)

[MmeLindor]

I agree with Jem.

Good writing, regular content and links to decent websites seem to do more for me than writing for a search engine.

I have been trying out the SEO optimisation plug in on my WP blog recently, but cannot say that I have more hits from it - I always got a fair amount of google hits, and I can't see that it has changed.

Might need a longer test period to see if it makes a difference.

//www.saltandcaramel.com

[jemjabella]

Which plugin are you using MmeLindor? There's a few SEO jobbies. I can't link any of them to specific improvements in hits/ranking but in terms of functionality and reliability I think WordPress SEO (by Yoast) is top - I use it on all client sites.

[MmeLindor]

Jem
yes, that is the one I am using. Can't say that I have noticed a difference, but I only installed it a couple of weeks ago and haven't gone back to all the previous posts.

I intend going back to the most searched and popular posts and tweaking them.

[katese11]

I don't "do SEO" delibrately, but I do look at my most popular search engine terms and write to accomodate them. For example, I have a lot of hits for "paddling pools in London", so one hot weekend I posted a round up of my favourite paddling pools (with links to older posts). It was recycling old material, but I wrote a few news bits around it. Got my best ever day!
Aside from that, not really but I get on the front page of google for things like "london toddler" and "sandpits london". Along with some pretty dark news stories ;)

[Pavlovthecat]

ok, so linking on your own site to a previous post...how do you do that kate? I have no clue, and am also starting to get my head around SEO stuff so reading this with interest (sorry for hijacking)

[katese11]

So, I do a round up something like this. Just a collection of old posts that are on a similar theme with a new introduction and new photo. To link on wordpress, you just find the post you wanna link to and copy the URL to that specific post (e.g. londonwithatoddler.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/a-sandpit-special/), then you highlight the text you want to be a link (e.g. "Sandpit Special") and then press the link button, which looks like a little loop. That comes up with a little box you can paste the target URL into. Sorry, don't know about non-Wordpress blogs, but it'll be similar!

[Pavlovthecat]

ooh i think i get it! i am on wordpress so i get the whole little loop thingy i don't have enough previous posts or reasons to 'sum' yet, it is all just nonsense ramblings really. but, in a month or so i might have some more to do that with.

that is one more thing i have learnt about blogging today, seem to learn at least one thing a day, today, it has been about 6!

[Pavlovthecat]

(love you blog btw)

[katese11]

thanks Pavlov :) Happy to help!

[jacob1232]

Developing high quality content is essential to the achievement of your SEO plan. You need to follow some onpage and offpage SEO rules in order to make your content reachable to the users.
SEO is alive. We still need SEO to promote our website traffic by ranking higher in search engine result page.

[HannahD78]

There are some very small tips to help improve the SEO for your blog, you can try social media and plug your blog on facebook and twitter. Alternatively, if your blog is there to offer advice, try going on forums about the relevant topics associated with your blog, you can probably have links in your comments and can take people to your website. These are some easy ways to help get some more traffic to your page!hope this was helpfull

[Craftsonsea]

Just wanted to say that I've taken your advice and done a round up of some slow cooker recipes ( here if you fancy a look ) as I seem to get googled a bit for that? Got positive feedback straight after popping it on twitter so will try to report in and let you know how it went traffic wise. Feeling like the mnbloggers SEO lab-rat

[Whatsamsawtoday]

Hi,

I have been writing my blog now for almost 3 years and over that time it has grown which has been fab for me - as I love writing it and to know people are reading and sharing and enjoying is a great privilege. (I blog about property, property auctions, landlord stuff etc)

In the early days I went on an SEO day course (free at the local college) I have no idea what they were saying. What I decided to do was concentrate on writing great content (IMHO) and then just see what tools I could find on wordpress to do some fancy pants stuff behind the scenes.

Does it work?

I have no idea - the key thing I do is just focus on my content and try and write "killer content" I hope then that anybody who comes across my blog will enjoy it and then maybe share - so I'm going down the route of "word-of-mouth" SEO if you like.

The plug-ins I currently have on wordpress:

All in One SEO Pack
HeadSpace2
SEO Friendly Images

Frankly, I haven't got a clue if they work - but I have decided it doesn't do much harm by having them there (I think!)

But my recommendation is always to aim for Killer Content

x

[YoungDebbie]

Out of curiosity, I just checked my most popular keywords of all time on my personal blog, //www.youngbyname.me, to see whether I could get them all into a post as an experiment.

They currently include:

Mr Micawber, hello kitty mood ring, sponge, hand luggage, fish processing girls, how to cut down on laundry, nominal determinism, and freelance philosopher.

Well, I reckon it would take a freelance philosopher to get those into a single sensible post! But I think in an idle moment, I'm going to have a go and see what happens!

Interestingly, a lot of these come via searches for photos, so probably aren't that valuable to me anyway. (When I used to run a website for girls' boarding school, we got a frightening number of searches for "girls in school uniform" - eek!)

I reckon a lot of the hits I get via SEO are actually from people who aren't really looking for what I'm writing, so I'm not that bothered - the hits that really matter to me are the people who seek out my blog because they love my writing and my approach to life. My blog is very wide-ranging on anything that takes my fancy, so there isn't an obvious set of words such as cookery or knitting or poetry. Hard to resist the lure of extra hits though - it's an addiction!

[Whatsamsawtoday]

I was just reading this post by a successful blogger which I think has got some great tips in there - unique, emotional...content driven and maybe even a little controversial (but not just for the sake of it!)

postmasculine.com/how-to-start-a-blog

[wrestlingalligators]

I have been thinking about this as I've been receiving spam comments trying to get me to sign up to SEO websites. One of the messages had the following gobbledegook info:

You have to optimize your keyword and make sure that it has a nice keyword density of 3-5% in your article with relevant LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing). Then you should spread all H1,H2,H3 tags in your article.

This does not sound like writing! So I've decided to do nothing. I've no idea what my keywords would be anyway, as I lurch from writing about my job writing children's books, to writing about my other job raising children.

The blog what I wrote