Make Money Online with your Business Blog: Search Engine Optimized Blogging

I previously talked about How to Pick Your Blog Topic and Social Blogging. This article is about creating a blog that is search engine optimized.

In my blog experiment I found that when I picked a keyword phrase that people would search for and then optimize my blog properly for that word that search engines picked it up within 3 days. I didn't have to do anything special to promote my site, pay for keywords, or submit my blog to search engines for this to happen.

Here are the basic things I did to create a search engine optimized blog:

1. I picked a keyword that I knew people would be searching for.
2. I typed the title to match the keyword.
3. I picked the URL to match the keyword.
4. I added the keyword to the title of each post.
5. I used the keyword in the Categories (labels).

1) I picked a keyword that I knew people would be searching for.

After using the Google query suggestion feature and see what kinds of things people were searching for I decided upon a topic for my blog. I picked a topic that millions of people would be searching for and one that also had a lot of sub topics that I could draw from. I didn't pick a topic that was too broad because I knew it would be hard to rank high enough, fast enough. I also picked a topic that I had knowledge of and that I could find material for easily.

I also picked a topic that I could make multiple blogs with overtime. My main topic is broad enough that I can have other sub-topic blogs and eventually link all of them together. Why wait to get backlinks when you can create your own? Yes, yet another article I must write - the advantage of creating multiple blogs.

2) I typed the title to match the keyword.

I also typed the Title of my blog using the keyword I picked as my topic. Once again you can use keywords, a keyword phrase and also popular misspellings of your keyword in the title.

3) I picked the URL to match the keyword.

When I setup my blog (I use Blogger) I made sure that the keyword was at the beginning of my blogspot.com address. If you are using a keyword phrase use that and not just the one keyword.

4) I added the keyword to the title of each post.

When I write my posts I make sure to add the keyword at the beginning of the post title. From what I have read and learned, the keyword or keyword phrase needs to be near the beginning of the post title because when your blog program makes the URL for that blog post some of the words in your title will get cropped off, especially if your post is long.

Example: The article I wrote about social blogging has a URL that looks like this:

http://www.businessbloggingguide.com/2008/11/make-money-online-with-your-business.html

But the title of that post was: Make Money Online with your Business Blog: Social Blogging

Blogger cut off part of the title, Blog: Social Blogging, to fit the .html part of the URL into a certain character requirement. I am not sure if that character limit is 144 characters or what it is. Maybe someone else knows and can share that in a comment below.

4) I used the keyword in the Categories (labels).

On the new blog I used my keyword at the beginning of each Category name. Blogger calls them Labels but they are really the Categories your posts fall under.

Example:

Here are some of Categories for posts on this site.

• About the BB Guide
• Are you new to Blogging?
• Attracting Readers
• Blog Design and Layout
• Blog Terms
• Blogging in the News
• Business Blog Benefits
• Business News
  

Some other things you can do to help even more:

1) Use the keyword in the body of the blog posts.

In my experiment blog I didn't even use my keyword in the body of the post and it still came up in Google after 3 days. I think the "key" to Google search results is really the URL, the Title of the blog, and the Title of the posts.

It does help even more if the first paragraph you write has the keyword in it at least once and if the entire blog post uses the keyword as well.

2) Use the keyword many times in the blog posts.

Griz has mentioned that you should have your keyword in your post at least 24 times. Well, he writes really long posts so that would make sense but on my new blog my posts are very short so it doesn't work.

Basically, for search engine results we are talking about the consistent use of your blog's topic through the URL, the Blog Title, the Post Title, Category names, and in the body of your blog.

For a search engine optimized blog you are really focusing on one topic and one topic only. You shouldn't change topics if you want to attract search engine traffic. Of course, you probably aren't going to attract as many readers but you can still have a sort of community because your posts can be diversified enough even when you are talking about the same topic.

And, your posts shouldn't just be a spam of your keyword. You need to write in a conversational tone or at least have some type of style that Google will see as a valid article. Otherwise you will just get banned and will never get your blog to come up.

What do you think about the system I came up with?

Do you have an ideas to add to it?
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New Here? The Business Blogging Guide is designed for the beginner "newbie" to intermediate blogger. It mainly focuses on blogs using Blogger.com. If you are looking for help with WordPress try Lorelle on WordPress. This blog is a NOFOLLOW blog so leaving your keywords or business name in the comments WILL NOT give you a link back. Subscribe for free by RSS or EMAIL.

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