There are obviously many things that you can do to for search engine optimization (SEO) but which should you focus on? Your time is valuable so I made a list of the top 5 things that you should do to maximize your time. In other words, why spend four hours on something when you can spend an hour on a task that should return 100x more value? Enough chatter, let’s get on the list:
- Write fresh content consistently! I’ve mentioned this in several previous posts, most recently at Blog about your niche. There is absolutely nothing more important than providing real value on your blog on a regular basis. So write, write, write. Set a goal of every other day or every weekday or every day. Just make sure you post useful information related to the theme of your blog a few times a week at a minimum. If your blog is about puppies, keep writing about puppies and skip the rant on politics.
- Make your titles relevant. Having good, catchy titles are great. Having good, catchy titles with keywords related to your post is even better. So if your post is about losing weight, instead of “Shedding your unwanted fat” you could go with “Shedding the extra weight: lose 10 pounds in a month safely”.
- Use keywords in your content. Don’t go crazy with this and scatter keywords unnecessarily (you will actually be penalized for that) but make sure you have some keywords in the body of your post. Imagine if I never actually wrote the words “search engine optimization” in this post, which is exactly what the post is about.
- Have a logical site structure. This is pretty automatic if you use a good blogging platform (e.g. blogger or wordpress.com). However, if you are using custom themes or running your own blog on a separate host, that may change things a bit. Just make sure that your blog structure is organized so your directories and pages are easy to understand.
- Use Google Analytics. It’s arguably the most useful analytical tool for your blog and it’s absolutely free! There’s no reason not to use Google Analytics. You can learn about where your visitors are from geographically, how long they are staying, what your traffic is this week compared to last week, how many other posts they are looking at, and much more. One important thing to monitor is which keywords are bringing them to your site. You could simply continue to utilize those keywords in future posts if you want to improve ranking for that niche.
None of this is groundbreaking. In fact, you should probably do these things for your readers anyway, not just for SEO purposes. And even though search engine algorithms change all the time, the aforementioned things to do have pretty much always been part of the core. It doesn’t mean you don’t need to do anything else either but if you only have time for 5 things, do these. Backlinks, keywords in the URL, tags/categories, directories, social networking, microblogging, and a bunch of other tactics will come in due time. Happy blogging!
This guest post was written by Gabe Young from freebloghelp.com.
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
This will help the newbies and also the bloggers who are stuck up like me
to improve their SEO and content.
I used to use Google Analytics before but wasn’t happy with the stats and when i checked in Statpress plugin it showed all the redirects and referrers from other blogs and sites
Anyways i liked the post because i din feel it is a guest post and later when i read at last i came to knew that Gabe has written this
Tweeted 
Nice post Gabe
.-= Sunil Jain´s last blog ..10 Best Apple-iPhone Christmas Resources =-.
There are so many things that can be done for SEO but I wanted to demonstrate how even new bloggers can go after that low hanging fruit. Doing these core activities will boost their traffic quite a bit.
The highest SEO is make your readers happy because it will make google happy. That’s my opinion.
.-= Dana @ Online Knowledge´s last blog ..Create Contact Form for WordPress Blog =-.
I agree. I write for people, not Google. However, for those who want that extra bump, using keywords and phrases helps.
That’s a nice post mate, but I guess you forgot to add social bookmarking… It also plays a very important role in SEO…
Thanx!
.-= Akash Malik´s last blog ..How To Add Yahoo Messenger Emoticons To Wordpress Blog =-.
Social bookmarking drives a lot of traffic on my site. However, I wanted to keep this to a Top 5 list.
If I had to add a few more, I would probably include directories, SEO pages, and backlinks as well.
A very clever idea, will implement it as soon as possible. It really helped me a lot and hope it will be helpful for others also. Thanks a lot for sharing. Keep blogging.
These sure all good tips but I’m stuck as early as the first step here. And to think that the first one is, I believe, the most important.
I have a day job and this is why I have to really do serious time management if I am to provide regular content for my blog.
Cool guest post Gabe.
.-= James Moralde´s last blog ..Help Save MySQL =-.
First, congrats on your day job since many people don’t think about blogging until they are unemployed.
As for providing regular content, it’s not as hard as you think. The content actually takes less time than promotion.
I prefer quality over quantity so simply create a schedule that works for you instead of rushing out posts. If you can commit three hours a week to writing, that’s should be enough to produce three articles a week. Not perfect but definitely workable.
Gabe Young, thanks for the tips. ” Write fresh content consistently ” is the key, if you are not using Analytics, it will be a great mistake. for me the same helping a lot.
.-= Technics Today.com´s last blog ..neoSearch – the new way to search =-.
IMO, these are not only sound SEO practices but also the foundation of blogging in general.
nice post about seo . just in the right time , i just review a great seo tips to in my blog…
.-= EarningStep´s last blog ..The hidden secret of SEO you need to know – Basic SEO tips =-.
Agree. These are the must do for me too.
.-= Jayce´s last blog ..How to hack Facebook account profile =-.
Yes, the basics you described are what every person in the SEO field should take into consideration. Follow those steps correctly and you can being noticing a spike in traffic. SEO is an ongoing marketing strategy that you must implement in todays growing internet marketing industry.
Now the current date SEO is doing an unique task for implementing business sites ,Social networking sites etc.so it’s play an important role in internet business.thanks for the steps given for SEO.
Great SEO tips here.
.-= TechChunks´s last blog ..Top 10 Link-Building Tips for Your Blog (SEO) =-.
nice tips i also agree with you Gabe!