The Real Basics of SEO for Blogs (According to Me)

Posted on September 7th in SEO — 14 Comments so far. Got something to say?

Every article I write is polluted with my own ideas, whether it be something horribly overdone like today, or any other day. The basics of SEO is much discussed and written, but I think my approach is a little different, so I present to you in fantastically organized and pretty form, my own dead basics to optimizing your website for search engines.

First… The Contents

Here’s a list for quick reference of what I’ll be going on abou. This will be quite a lengthy article, so here is where you can pick your favourite parts to skip to.

• Know your objectives/set goals.
• Titles.
• The holy H1 tag and its few uses.
• Anchor text.
• Internal linking.
• External links and “nofollow”
• Semantic Web Markup
• Keyword Density and Placement

Know your Objectives and Set Goals

Step 1 to doing anything is always know where you’re going. Or at least where you want to go.

When I first started realizing what SEO was and understanding it, and coming to terms that I could manipulate search results, the first thing I wanted was #1 for my name. That’s all SEO means to me- to be able to manipulate the search engines in your favour- and it’s something that is damn important. Every time you search for “Connor Wilson” I want my name to be on top, wherever you search from.

I had some trouble with an old Blogger profile (which still ranks #2) and an IMDb profile for some Spanish actor, but now I have a death grip on that spot. There are a ton of reasons, including good titles, domain keywords, tons of links with that anchor and the fact that I am the authority on… me.

All that aside, I knew my goal, took aim and took action. Set goals so that you can take action towards something.

Titles

This is in every single post regarding SEO ever written. Why? Because it’s so important, possibly one of the top one or two things to ranking high for your terms. Whether it is the most important for ranking or not, it is the most important for getting the user to click to your site. A title with none of the terms they want is likely to get passed over, even if you’re in the #1 slot.

The title system I use here is a quick but of PHP I wrote ages ago and works with WordPress to create dynamic titles. This is my exact code:

<title>
<?php wp_title('');
if (function_exists('is_tag') and is_tag()) { ?>Tag Archive for <?php echo $tag; }
if (is_archive()) { ?> Archive<?php }
elseif (is_search()) { ?> Search for <?php echo $s; }
if ( !(is_404()) and (is_search()) or (is_single()) or (is_page()) or (function_exists('is_tag') and is_tag()) or (is_archive()) ) { /**/ }
if(is_home()) { bloginfo('name'); } ?></title>

Basically I just don’t want to have it setup like “Post title > Connor Wilson” because why would a searcher care about me? They want the single post, so I give them the post title only in the header. If they do care about me, they do get “Connor Wilson” on the home page.

The Holy H1 tag and its few Uses

The H1 tag is another one of those huge factors to helping your SE cause. There are few uses to get the most out of it:

• Serving your logo or name in an H1
• Serving post titles in an H1
• Serving post titles in an H1 on a single post page, and H2 everywhere else, with the name in an H1 on the home page, and a div everywhere else.

That last one may seem a little confusing, but in a nutshell, if you’re serving titles in an H1, serve your site’s name in a DIV. I serve my name in a DIV all around and all post titles are H1. This is a personal choice based on the aforementioned death grip hold I have on the search for my name.

The reason you need to be careful with these heading tags is because they essentially tell the SE what the page is about. Is every page about you? As egotistical as you may be, you don’t want to give the SE a bad idea. Serving multiple post titles in an H1 may seem like a bad idea because of this, but I only display a maximum of four posts at a time anyways.

Anchor Text

A quick fun-fact to those non-HTML inclined: the linked text between the <A> tags is called anchor text. Why? That’s what the A stand for. The HREF, that contains the location means Hypertext REFerence, but don’t worry so much about that

That said, the anchor text is very important. One of the off-site factors that carry a lot of weight are the links carrying the anchor text you want. Depending on that link’s strength, having anchor text that matches your target keywords is important. It doesn’t always have to be exact, and it’s not good to have every single link pointing to your site carry that text.

Also keep in mind that the “link juice” of the link in question carries much weight. There’s lots of factors in determining the link’s strength (seriously, LOTS), so this is where things get a little confusing. Just know: the more the better. Also know: I’d say on-site SEO is better for your cause than off-site stuff like this, but don’t go unlinked.

Internal Linking

How your pages are linked within your site is very important. Don’t forget, your own pages (each and every one of them) have their own link juice so to speak. Some tips to have a good network of intraconneceting links:

• Consistent navigation across every page (where possible).
• If your logo is an image, use CSS to replace linked text, and have it link back to your home page.
• A Sitemap can do everyone a lot of good. Mine is a stock Cutline feature and links all my posts and pages.
• Linking within your site in posts.

I believe you can get up to PR5 with few backlinks if you properly intralink. Just to avoid any confusion here, intra is the prefix, not inter. Intralinking is supposedly a made up word to spell checkers, but it just means “linking within”.

External links and “Nofollow”

External links are good. Other sites giving external links is what gives you links, so it’s only fair you share the link love every now and then. Be careful though, too many outbound links can be bad. Huge blogrolls and linktrains can really castrate your link juice.

Speaking of castrating (powerful word, eh?) link juice, that’s exactly what nofollow does. I’ve been told the SE bots still follow links tagged with nofollow, but the added tag really hinders much of the link’s strength. If you’re going to participate in a linktrain or something else where you’ll have a Bonanza-O-Externals, make sure you nofollow them.

NoFollow isn’t all bad, like it is made out to be by the DoFollow plugin I and many other bloggers use to give their commentators some good links. It helps you control the proverbial pet population of your site. I think that’s a great way to put NoFollow in perspective. It may be a little sick, but adding “rel=’nofollow’” to an anchor more or less neuters it’s link power.

Semantic Web Markup

The Definitive Guide to Semantic Web Markup for Blogs. Read it. Live by it. Simple, but that’s all that needs to said here. That article is the Bible of correct hierarchy on blogs.

Keyword Density and Placement

Finally, to bring this home, I’d like to talk about keyword density and the placement of your keywords.

Keyword density refers to the amount of times a keyword appears in your page. Can be measured as a % with keywords/total words.

Having a good keyword density is never a bad idea. Don’t overdo it, however. Find the balance between “what is this page about?” and “WOW, this page is total spam”. For a blog you can just use keywords in posts. Don’t randomly throw them in, though. You want to please both Google and your readers, and keep that in mind.

Now, if you were to think of one place for a keyword where would it be? An H1! If you have a laser targeted site, much unlink this one, have your title served in an H1 all the time. If you’re site is about making money online, serve “Make Money Online” in an H1 all the time. Titles are come in above H1’s, and URLs come in somewhere in between, or below H1 on the priority list.

1. Keyword in title.
2. Keyword in H1.
3. Keyword in the URL.
4. Keyword in H2/H3 subheading.
5. All the rest. Basically content.

That’s the order of items I’d place my keywords in. Writing about your keyword on a daily basis like many do is a great way to get a healthy density and good placement.

To wrap up, just remember these are my views on the subject and you should keep in mind I am not an SEO expert. SEO is part of my website and really my daily life in how it affects my traffic, etc… and along the way I’ve learned some stuff, that I share with you, the reader.