8 simple SEO tips for blogs

Follow these simple rules for search engine optimization and your blog will rank much higher in Search Engines.

1. Use your primary keyword in your blog domain
The first thing to do is to ensure that your blogs URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for. Using the targeted keyword in subdomains also helps.
For example, if you want to start a HTML tutorial site then the primary keyword you want your URL to contain is html. So choose a URL like www.htmlhelp.com.
You can also use the keyword in subdomains like www.web-design.com/htmlhelp

2. Use your primary keyphrase in the title of your posts
If your primary key phrase is html help make sure that the word html and help appear in your blog headers such as H1 and H2 tags as well as the title of each of your posts.

3. Use your secondary keywords in the body of your post
If you want to get listed for secondary keywords use them infrequently in the body of your post. The theory is that the more times a keyword appears within a Webpage, the more relevant the page is likely to be for someone searching those keywords.
But do not overdo this by repeating the same keywords over and over again. Google bots can find out if a keyword is too frequent on a page and might just remove your site from their index.

4. Use your keywords in the anchor text of links
Use your primary and secondary keywords in the anchor text of links when linking to other blog posts or to other pages of your blog. Keyword in links have more importance than simple text.

5. Make sure search engines can spider your blog easily
Make sure your navigation bar is present on all pages of your blog. Your previous posts or atleast the popular ones should be linked to all pages so they get spidered easily.

6. Get backlinks from other blogs
You need as many links as possible to link back to your posts or blog because it will help you build pagerank and get your blog to rank higher in search engines. The more links you have the higher your blog is ranked in Technorati helping your blog to be found easily.
So how do you get backlinks?
* The first thing to do to get high-quality links is to submit your blog and RSS feed to blog search engines and directories.Start by submitting your blog to all the directories listed on this page:http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/
* Link exchanging with other similarly-themed blogs will help you to form richly interlinked networks or communities.
* If you find an interesting article on another blog, link to it generously. The trackback will become a link back to your blog.
* Lastly posting legitimate comments in response to posts on other blogs will help you get backlinks. Regularly post legitimate comments in similarly-themed blogs with high traffic to get many backlinks.

7. Update your blog frequently
Update your blog frequently using all the rules mentioned above and your blog will surely get top rankings in a short time.

8. Stick with your blog
Once you start posting on your blog, stick with the same domain or you could end up losing a lot of your traffic and regular readers.
Also stick with the topic you selected for your blog. If it��s about pets don��t suddenly switch to another topic such as Gadget��s because you will loose traffic.

Tips to get blog traffic with blog directories

There are hundreds and hundreds of blog directories out there for people to get their blogs listed. But apart from being included so that your blog can gain more exposure to the Internet users around the world, what else can a blog directory help to drive more and more traffic to your blog? Here's the answer!

With all the submitted blogs classified into various categories, bloggers can easily find blogs that are related or similar to your own blog. With this, you can start your own free advertising campaign by promoting in these related blogs. One of the easiest (and of course cheapest) way to achieve this is to leave a comment in the latest post. By leaving a comment, not only will the owner take notice of your blog but most importantly the visitors. Most visitors (me included) like to read comments very much and makes the so-called "comment advertising" so powerful.

Here are some tips you should bear in mind about leaving comments:

1. Never leave short, useless or canned comments
Comments like "Nice!", "Cool!", "Great Blog!", etc will not get you any attention from smart bloggers who would delete spam comments promptly. Take some time and read some of the content and give some solid suggestions for improvements or tell the owner why you love his/her blog. Afterall, everything is free so it takes you some time to do this. (But actually, I got a really nice tip for those who really don't have the mood to go over some tedious blogs out there. Try to give suggestions based on the layout of the blog. In this way, you only have to glance through the blog without bothering to read the content and it's always easier to criticise one's layout. You can try this: "It would be better, in my opinion, if you blend the advertisements in to your blog by setting the background colour of the ad units." By using this technique, you can give long but useful comments and gives the owner a feeling that you are here to help rather than to advertise.

2. Never be rude or too "hard-sell".
Try to be humble as you won't want others to leave comments such as "I GOT A REALLY REALLY GREAT BLOG ABOUT ENGINEERING!!!! VISIT PLEASEEEEE!!!", would you? So try to keep your tone nice and kind. Use sentences like "I also got a blog about engineering, you might want to take a look at it, here's the link." or "Can you give me some advice about my engineering blog?" Your commentwill always appear to be acceptable and pleasing if you don't sound like a salesperson.

3. Visit the blogs you have left comments on frequently and keep an eye on any replies to your post.
Only if you follow up on your comment will you gain a positive impression from thr blogmaster. Always be responsive if the owner or visitors reply to you.

4. Leave comments again when you have written a new post or changed the layout.
This keeps reminding the blogmaster of your blog as they tend to forget things after they find the first one not interesting. Keep on trying and you need some time to build up a large audience. But remember, never over do it or you sense that the owner dislike your doing so.

Starting from today, don't just use blog directories as a listing place only, use them thoroughly by discovering blogs that are of the same category as yours. And drive traffic to your blog by commenting on them. Try it yourself and see how powerful this "comment advertising" is!

What is PINGING?

Originally, a ping was a program that bounced a request off of another computer/server over a network or the Internet to see if the remote computer was responding. That same program is now used as a method of informing others that your blog exists and also let’s them know when a new post has been made.

When you put the two together - blogging and pinging - you get a technique that is extremely effective at getting ANY web site, no matter how big or small, indexed by the major search engines.