10 SEO Tips to Make Your Blog #1 In Search Results

Question 1:  Have you tried everything you can to get traffic to your blog, but not getting much results?

Question 2: Do you ever wonder why your blog is not getting much traffic, while others seem to get hundreds or even thousands of unique visits every month?

Question 3: What makes your blog shrinking and how to get more traffic and #1 place in Google search results.

Curious to know?

Hmm lets get into this topic then…

You can’t do anything without having huge traffic, can you? Then what’s the best way to bring massive traffic to your blog?

Surely with the help of search engines via organic or natural traffic. It’s the easy and smart way to get free traffic to your blog.

Did you notice that only few blogs get #1 search results in the search engine results almost every time?

How to get it done for your blog too then?

You can do this with the help of quality backlinks and better search engine optimization techniques.

First things first, let’s begin from the bottom.

What Is SEO? (In simple words)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality of web traffic to your blog or website from search engines through “Organic/natural” way for targeted keywords.

What are targeted keywords?

Targeted keywords are the “Specific Keywords” which you use to expose your blog content i.e to give more importance to few keywords which people may search most often on Google to reach your blog.

Now coming to the main part..

SEO Tips to Make Your Blog No.1 In Search Results

 

1. Getting high quality inbound links

Inbound links or incoming links play a major role in making your blog search engine friendly and giving top search results to your blog.

Let’s assume, if a PR 6 blog linked one of your posts, then the chances of getting exposure will be really high.

It will increase your organic traffic, better search results and gives quality backlinks to your blog. Moreover it increases your PR too. One shot, two birds.

That’s why writing high quality content is more important than any other for a blog to get #1 search results.

2. Keep your URL’s short and sweet

Why you need to make your URL structure short?

Smart question..

I will show you in a pictorial way to better understand this, before that you need to know the difference between better URL structure and bad URL structure..

Worst URL structure:

http://www.yourURLsucks.com/20012/04/10/about/p=?5874

Optimized (better) URL:

http://www.yourURLrocks.com/post-title/

If you use the worst URL which is lengthy (in general) then the search engine crawlers find it difficult to find them. It takes extra time to find your content and chances of getting your #1 page search results will be less.

OK then..

How to optimize your URL’s?

Go to:

WP-admin >> Settings >> Permalinks

Now click on, “Custom structure”

and type or paste this:

/%postname%/

You are done! It’s the most optimized URL structure for your blog which gets crawled easily.

3. Always interlink to your old blog posts

Interlinking your new blog posts with the old blog posts is an effective way to reduce the bounce rate. It also increases the chances of getting #1 place in search results.

Don’t use irrelevant links to your blog. Make them relevant and use them effectively.

You may interlink 1 to 3 in least case (for every blog post you write)

Even you can use more than 3 (if your content is too lengthy and where it’s appropriate to interlink with your previous posts)

4. Don’t be selfish, include at least one outbound link to the authority blog in your niche:

Outbound linking means “giving links to other blog(s) from your blog posts”.

This can actually help your blog’s performance in the search engines!! But, how?

Whenever you provide a link to authority blogs or other blogs,  you will get a trackback and in some cases, your search engine ranking and visibility may increase due to that particular post. But, you should consider few things while doing outbound linking.

Precautions while doing outbound linking -

Try to make it “nofollow”

Don’t over link to the external sites/blogs. Even if you want to link, simple include their link without giving the “link address”.

Ex: If you want to link to seomoz.org. Instead of giving a link to it, try to write seomoz.org/5-tips-to-die Just remove the link and everything else will be fine.

Benefits of doing outbound linking is, you can have a healthy relationship with whom you are linking to and there may be a chance of getting links from them in return (if they are from authority blogs, then your blog ranking, visibility will be up in the sky but the chances are less though). But, you should have some respect on the authority blogs and be generous to linking them when ever it’s needed.

It will surely help your business in long run.

5. Build quality backlinks

The more quality backlinks you have the more authority it is. Backlinks are  just like ‘votes’. Most bloggers believe that, backlinks from low rated PR blogs is not good – it’s a myth actually.

It’s like ‘voting system’. No matter from where you are getting, but they worth. But, not in the case of buying the backlinks  :P(never buy the backlinks from anywhere – Google penalizes for sure and Google is smarter than us)

How you can get quality backlinks to your blog then?

Few ways are(I will make this as brief as possible)

• Blog commenting: Comment on top blogs in your niche. Try to make useful and insightful comments. Read: 3 Reasons Your Blog Not Getting Much Comments: How to Get Them
• Guest blogging: Guest blog on other blogs in your niche. Try to start from the small blogs like PR1 or PR2 and slowly increase the pace. I would suggest you to guest blog at least on 3 or more blogs in a month.
• Participating in forums: This is another way to build quality backlinks. Try to find out the forums which are related to your blog’s topic and participate there actively and submit your blog posts regularly.
• Article marketing: Submit your best content to article directories like;
• www.GoArticles.com
• www.Article99.com
• www.ValuableContent.com
• www.EzineArticles.com
• www.eHow.com
• www.ArticleDashBoard.com

6. Search engine friendly design

Try to use search engine friendly design. A Better search engine optimized blog design always makes the search results better and effective. The major point here is, you can get better search results if you have search engine friendly design even if you don’t know much about SEO!! That’s the key-point here.

If possible, try to purchase Thesis or Genesis as soon as possible (I will be purchasing Thesis next month – I will tell you why I am going for Thesis instead of Genesis in my next article – hopefully)

Customize yourself(if you know coding) or hire a professional(this is better) or buy a SEO friendly theme skins

7. Keywords play essential role

Keywords should be used in a smart way. No over usage or less usage!

Title tags are really important. Use Keyword tool to analyze the competitive keywords in your blogging niche. If you find it bit tough to use, then use “Google insights tool”. Here is a screen shot for the keyword “seo tips”..

 

At the end of the above image, you will see “top searches” which will be useful for your blog article keywords, quite easy isn’t it?

8. Getting unique visitors through quality content

What if your blog is perfectly optimized and has everything except the quality content?

Your blog sucks…

So, try to create quality content. Here are few tips on creating it..

Quality content means, it should be

• Valuable: Your content must be valuable, it should add value to your blog.
• Unique: Your content should not be copied from any other source and it should have compelling content writing skills.
• Fresh content: Most of the times, search engines prefer fresh content rather than the old or repeated content. Try to update your blog often if you can. If not, update it ‘regularly’ (not daily) with engaging content..

9. Make your blog loading time faster

Do you know Google considers blog’s loading time to give higher rankings for specific keywords?

Yes, it does..

It will help to boost organic traffic from search engines for specific keywords which you use for your blog posts. So, try to make your blog loading time faster using the following methods.

• Optimize your images before you use: Many expert bloggers have suggested to optimize the images to make your blog loads faster. What I say  is to optimize them before you use them. Use image compressors to do this.  Instead of uploading your images and compressing them using post editors, this is the best way to go.
• Cut the clutter: Don’t make your blog an ad agency and never use useless widgets and plugins. Use the best plugins, try to clear the clutter in your blog as much as possible.
• Use better hosting: Instead of using free or nonsense hosting providers. Use the top class hosting providers like HostGator. Better hosting ultimately makes your blog’s loading time better.
• W3 Cache: This is the best WP plugin to clear the cache in your blog. This is the gift to WP power users like you and me

10. Use the following methods effectively

Submit your sitemap: Submit your blog sitemap to search engines.

Use the ALT tag always: Search engines like Google, Yahoo! uses separate bots to find the images! But these bots don’t crawl as often they crawl your content. What you need to keep in mind is, they will crawl even the images. So, it’s really a bad idea if you use weird names for your images like “0000155.jpg” or “asdaegljadfg.png” etc. Instead of this, name your images corresponding to your blog posts.

Always use alt tags: Here is an excellent WP plugin on this which I came across:

SEO Friendly Images automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images improving traffic from search engines.

Download

Search engines are blind and deaf – So, use them “smart”: Search engines can’t see your videos as we see, they can’t listen to the podcasts as we do. What they only do is – they perform their crawling in text format.

If you have any doubt – once view “page source” does it include videos or only text?

So, create great and in-depth content for your blog along with the ‘regular’ creation of your videos or podcasts.

 

Bonus tips:

Use XML sitemap, add rel=”nofollow” to the external links, never buy links to increase your PR, use images to get traffic.

Note: If you are a newbie blogger who have just started, just concentrate on creating the content which is interesting, unique and useful rather than worrying about SEO and search results.

In summary, write quality, unique and authoritative content, try to increase quality backlinks to your blog because Google loves authority blogs.

Small Note: Most of my blogging buddies asking me that why are you not posting daily and you are not even coming to online on facebook, twitter or chat. What the hell are you doing then?

Here’s the answer..

I am working on creating useful content and I believe that great content always takes time to produce, and one shouldn’t get distracted while creating the ‘master piece’. Another major reason is, I have my B.Tech final semester exams this month(I am currently pursuing computer science engineering), and they will be finished on 4th May. So, till then I can’t produce much content. After finishing my exams, I promise, I will be a full time blogger and can produce more useful content every month(professional bloggers, beware of Rahul )

I don’t know whether I am doing right or wrong(not posting daily – publishing only when I think it’s a better content). But I am pretty sure that Rahul(hey that’s me) is happy. I don’t worry about the results.

“Just do your work and don’t worry about the results” – this is my philosophy, quite good, isn’t it?

OK I should be thankful for you to reading my stuff and YOU are the ultimate judge to tell me whether this content is useful or not.

Do you have any more SEO tips? Do share them below. I’ll respond to most of the comments, because I love them