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The internet is chock full of blogs.  It’s a harsh reality that as the internet becomes more densely populated, rising to the top of the search engine rankings (SERPs) will naturally become more difficult.  However, there are numerous SEO methods available to all bloggers that will help increase search engine exposure.

First, we will consider blog posts.  Each blog post should be tuned to maximise its contribution to the overall SEO effort of your blog.  Usually, each post will appear on the front page of your blog for a period and subsequently be linked to from the front page of your blog.  So it is important that it be fine tuned in accordance with accepted SEO best practices.

For each post, ensure the post title includes its target keyword or keyphrase in the left most position and ensure that you have your permalink structure set up appropriately. 

Contribute to the overall crawlability of your blog by linking within context to other articles or post on your blog.  For example, you could start out “In my last post on this topic found here” etc. 

If using images and/or links within blog posts, be sure to  include concise and accurate HTML ALT and TITLE tags.

Within the main body of your blog post, attempt to repeat your main target keyword or keyphrase several times.  Some ‘experts’ seem to brand figures of anywhere between 1% to 5% of the overall body text should be keywords.  I have never noticed any empirical conclusions that back up these figures.  But I do recommend repeating your main keyword several times.

Additionally, repeat similar keywords or keyphrases or popular search variants and synonyms of your main keyword or keyphrase.  This will increase your exposure for searches that couple a variant of your keywords.

Where possible and when appropriate, use HTML <strong> tags to emphasize your main keywords or keyphrases.  Some say that this has no overall effect on your SERPs, however, I have noticed some improvement when using this technique in particular situations.  For example, I once had a sports blog and used HTML <strong> tags to highlight inline the names of players.  I used such highlighting consistently for this purpose across the entire blog and mid-term results seemed to indicate that I did start to see more traffic from search engines when these names were used in the search phrases.  Although I do not believe the evidence behind these claims to be entirely anecdotal, the gains might be very small.

The above are pointers that should help you increase organic traffic through search engines.  However, the most important rule to consider for every post is to write clear compelling content for human readers.  Above all, do not get overly pre-occupied with writing for search engines.

Working towards optimizing a site for search engines is an ongoing task simply because search engine algorithms are continually evolving.  However, there are several basic aspects of on site SEO that all should adhere to.  In this series of blog entires, I outline some basic SEO best practices that will help establish a foothold in your selected niche.  Each entry contains five onsite SEO recommendations.

Optimize HTML <title> tags on a per page basis
Be sure to compose unique <title> tags for every page of your site.  Ensure that these <title> tags include one or two of your target keywords or keyphrases and that the keywords or keyphrases appear in their leftmost position.  For example, “Cheap Gymnastics Leotards” is better than “A Broad and Varied Range of Cheap Gymnastics Leotards“ if you are targeting cheap gymnastics leotards.  Although a matter of some debate, some suggest keeping <title> tag content between 48 and 72 characters.  The text in the <title> tag can appear directly in SE search results, so making it relevant and compelling can increase SE traffic.

Optimize HTML <H1> tags on a per page basis
Utilize unique <H1> tags on all pages and ensure they include the page’s target keyword or keyphrase in the left most position.

Unique HTML META Keywords per page
Ensure you use unique META keywords relevant to the page content.  Avoid too much repetition of individual words and certainly avoind keyword-stuffing.

Unique HTML META descriptions per page
Use unique META descriptions per page.  Use target keywords and phrases in the leftmost position and avoid overrunning about 72 characters with target content.

Unique descriptive HTML ALT tags on all images
Since SE spiders do not read text contained within images, HTML ALT tags provide you a opportunity to tell SE spiders what your images are about.  Be sure to use unique, descriptive and keyword-rich ALT tags on all images.  Avoid repetition and keyword-stuffing.  Make your ALT tags easily readable, single sentences.

SEO activity can be divided in to two broad categories, namely, offsite SEO and onsite SEO. 

Onsite SEO refers to all the methods used in the design and presentation of your site in order to enhance its appeal to search engines and spiderability.  Onsite SEO includes tweaking hundreds of factors that can increase the quality of information search engines retrieve when visiting your site.  There are no magic formulae for these elements, but using them all appropriately can lead to significant gains in search engine rankings.  Onsite SEO factors include (but are not limited to):

• choice of text within HTML h# tags (for example, <h1> or <h3> tags).  Do not overuse h1 tags, one per page;
• choice of text within HTML title tags.  This should be unique for each page on your site;
• keyword density within HTML body tags.  Historically (and, perhaps, anecdotally), a density of 3% to 5% evenly distributed on pages of over 200 words was thought to be near optimal, although this is near impossible to assess objectively;
• strong relevant internal linking.  Breadcrumb style sub-navigation on pages can strengthen internal linking;
• choice of text within HTML META description tag.  This should be unique for each page on your site;
• watch out for broken links within your site;
• keywords in HTML <strong> tags;
• use an up-to-date XML sitemap;
• use an up-to-date HTML sitemap;
• place target keywords high up on the page;
• customize 404 pages to include links back to principal areas of your site’s navigation structure;
• use unique and relevant HTML ALT tags on all images;

These are several of the more important factors that influcence onsite SEO, many of which we shall return to in more depth in ensuing articles on this blog.

Offsite SEO refers to the methods employed to improve search engine rankings by maximizing the influence of factors outside your site’s home domain.  For example, building strong, relevant inbound links from other domains/sites.  The principal object of offsite SEO is quality link building.  Link building has evolved to become a full and separate discipline within SEO and we will return on more than one occasion to tackle the many aspects of link building in future articles on this blog.

Ordinarily, onsite SEO should be undertaken before proceeding to offsite SEO efforts and are usually quicker and easier to perform.  Offsite SEO efforts are usually divided in to mid- to long-term projects.