Creating A Blog – Part Six: Optimizing Your Blog for Search Engines and More
Author: Jim | Filed under: Blogging 101, Blogging Tricks
Welcome back to Part Six of theNetFool.com’s “Creating A Blog” series. Now that you have your blog all set up and customized, you are essentially ready to go. However, most find it very effective to optimize their blogs so that search engines and readers more easily find your website. Taking a few small steps to “SEO” (search engine optimize) your website can work wonders, and you will be forever losing to your competition unless you do this at some point. So before we get into marketing your blog, let’s take some completely free and time-tested methods to boosting your traffic with optimization techniques.
People typically hear the word “SEO” and immediately put up a wall, thinking that it is something only the professionals can master. Far from it! SEO simply refers to simple techniques that organize things like your keywords and page URLs in a more efficient 
way to make big search engines like Google find your content faster and easier than before.
One quick note before we start: NEVER pay anyone to do this for you! People that promise “#1 Google Rankings in a Day” and so on are there to rip you off. They are going to be doing one of two things: “blackhat” techniques that will work for a day or two before getting you completely banned from Google or targeting an unwanted search keyword that will never help you. You can and should do this yourself! It is really quite easy when you get that hang of things, and I’ll even walk you through it! 
Here are my top five SEO steps to take before you start writing posts:
1. Structure Your Blog’s URLs Properly
When you look at a URL in my website, what do you see? Words! As a blogger, you do not want to have a structure that is “yoursite.com/02/2008/post-title” or anything with numbers at all. Then, take a look at my page titles. Notice that they are always “Post Title | Jimvesting” instead of the default? Again, this is very important for SEO purposes. These things are going to be the messy defaults you get with WordPress and almost any other system that you use, so we need to install and use the All-In-One SEO Pack WordPress plugin that I have recommended. You can find the link as well as installation instructions in Part 5 of my Creating A Blog series.
Let’s work a bit with All-In-One SEO! To get into the settings page after you have installed, navigate to “Settings” –> “All In One SEO” in your WordPress Admin section. From there, you should edit all of the setting to fit your structure.
- Your “Home Title” should be short and to the point, including your main keyword, and under 15 words in length (mine is “Making Money Online by Turning Time Into Cash – Jimvesting dot com”).
- Your “Home Description” is what shows up in Google most often when your website is short. Pack this with keywords and make it 160 words or less for the best results.
- Your “Home Keywords” are just that, your keyword phrases. I would just slam as many as you have in this box, though some recommend using just a few.
- Enable “Rewrite Titles” and have all the title options structured to show “%thing% | %blog_title%”
This may be a bit confusing to you so far, so what I have graciously done is taken a screenshot of all my settings. You can have a look at what I am doing for SEO by checking out this screenshot.
2. Creating A SiteMap for Your Site
A sitemap is essentially a listing of all of your pages, posts, etc. that are on your website. Because usually everything isn’t webbed together, it’s essential to have an updated sitemap so Google and other search engines can find your content easily and start getting you some reliable traffic.
I recommend installing the WordPress SiteMap Generator Plugin from Dagon Design. You can find this through their official website. Please note that there are probably tons of other that work in the same way, so use your favorite, but make sure that it is updating your sitemap on a regular basis.
3. Submitting Your Blog to Search Engines
Now that you have a sitemap and your page structures look clean, let’s let the search engines know about your website. You can use a service for free like SubmitExpress, FreeWebSubmission or AddPro to get you indexed in hundreds of engines. However, when it comes down to it, all that really matters is Google.
To start with Google, follow this link to submit your website to their search engines.
Once that is done, we are going to open up Google’s Webmaster Tools, and create a membership if you haven’t already. Once you are logged in, go ahead an “Add Your Site” so that you can login and start ordering Google around. You are most likely going to need to upload a small file to your server so Google knows you are the real owner (“google1248012.html” or similar), and you’ll be ready to go. You can have a look around, but all we need to do here is give them the sitemap we made, and get out!
To submit your sitemap, which should be “sitemap.xml” in your main root folder, navigate in your Webmaster Tools left-hand panel to “Sitemaps” –> “Add Sitemap.” We are going to be adding a “General Web Sitemap” and it should be in “yoursite.com/sitemap.xml” or another folder if you did things correctly. Once they’ve verified it exists, just make sure they are checking it often and that the status is “OK.”
4. Setting Up a “301 Redirect” with .htaccess
One of the most overlooked things in optimizing websites is using .htaccess to control how your website’s URL appears. Most people will link to your website as either “http://yoursite.com” or “http://www.yoursite.com” which creates BIG problems for Google. Essentially, it’s seen as two different websites, so all of your recorded growth is literally cut in half! You want your rankings high, right? So let’s change things around to maximize the results from your efforts.
Open up “notepad” or any text editing program with the ability to save a file with any extension you want. In it, simply put the following:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_Host} ^YOURDOMAIN.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/$1 [L,R=301]
Make sure that this is on four separate lines in the file, and that you replace “YOURDOMAIN” with your website. If you already have an .htaccess file on your server, which is very likely at this point, just download your existing one and add these lines to the top. Here’s a sample I have made if you want to download and use it, just don’t forget to rename it to “.htaccess” when you are done.
5. Link Your Blog Like a Pro!
Linking is the key to exposure, traffic and high rankings. While you should never link just for the sake of linking, feel free to spread the link love around as much as possible. This is why you see me posting “link love” every Sunday along with announcements… it can only help!
One big way you can get your website better trafficked is by installing a “related posts” plugin (as I have done) to show posts related to the current at the bottom of each article you publish. This make for solid deep links throughout your website, and will have your visitors staying longer by exploring similar content. I recommend and use the “Related Entries” plugin by WASABI.
Other than a related entries plugin, you should go around to blogs in your niche and comment on their posts (yes, this is an extra link). Also, try emailing whoever you can asking for link exchanges… which are mutually beneficial. You should never pay someone for a link, as you run the risk of almightly Google frowning upon your website (yes, they will catch you). But basically, don’t be a link nazi like many other bloggers, and you’ll soon find your efforts rewarded! 
This concludes part six of theNetFool.com’s “Creating A Blog” series. I hope that you have found this guide to SEO interesting. By this point, you are all ready to go and your website is looking stellar. All we need to do at this point is to start making posts as soon as possible, and then market it a bit to get your traffic. We’ll discuss this in Part Seven, so stay tuned! 
-Jimvesting
Related Posts
- Day 23: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Your WordPress Blog
- The 13 Deadly (SEO) Sins – Common Mistakes In Search Engine Optimization
- Creating A Blog – Part Five: Choosing Your Theme and Installing Plugins
- Day 21: Installing and Adding Plugins to your WordPress Blog
- Keyword Research and Search Engine Rankings: A Waste of Time and Money
Loading ...
you know how to write and very true about SEO. Sometimes I see people advertising “top page ranks in one day” but they themselves are 0 pagerank. People still go and pay these folks. Hope more people read these articles from you.
I am learning
diordnas last blog post..NoFollow, DoFollow, SEO, Blog Optimization, All that is moving to Geemodo.
Thanks! Nice article there! I was looking all around the blogosphere for contents like this one here.
Good job. I am looking forward to start SEOing my blog but I don’t know where to start. This post really helps a lot.
Desmond – GradeMoney.coms last blog post..I Will Buy Ads On Your Blog
I already had knowledge about first 3 points. I have done structuring my blog url and search engine submissions. Now I do not know how I submit a sitemap. I am on blogspot platform. Setting Up a “301 Redirect” with .htaccess and Link Your Blog Like a Pro! are very good tips. I hope I can do better SEO for my blog. Thanks for the add in my SEO knowledge.
Agent 001s last blog post..Win Premium Themes! Yet Another
Twitter: @jimvesting
June 12, 2008 at 1:12 am #
Why don’t you check out this article about getting your sitemap up an running Agent 001 – http://theos.in/hakuna-matata/adding-google-sitemap-to-bloggercom-blog-account/
Good luck!
Jim thanks for the link. It is helpful.
Agent 001s last blog post..Win Premium Themes! Yet Another
Great tips. I’m a seo-lover. Infact, most of my visitors were from search engines.
Husseins last blog post..What Motivates You To Blog?
One of the things that also affects your
Rajaie AlKoranis last blog post..Everyone Makes Mistakes, No Exceptions
I read somewhere that it helps if you remove your blog’s name after the post title.
ex. Sunday Link Love & Announcements | Jimvesting
it’s better if you change the title to this.
Sunday Link Love & Announcements
Rajaie AlKoranis last blog post..Everyone Makes Mistakes, No Exceptions
I don’t think so. I haven’t heard nor read regarding that. Blog’s name can help especially if the keyword is in the blog’s name.
Husseins last blog post..What Motivates You To Blog?
Twitter: @jimvesting
June 12, 2008 at 3:03 pm #
Yeah… I’m not too sure if that’s accurate. There are always those so-called gurus that swear by different methods that nobody really uses. Most of these I feel are just bad leads that don’t get you anywhere
Another great tip to increasing your Search engine traffic with your blog is to encourage comments. I get traffic to my blog for works and phrases that people put in comments all the time. The reason this happens is because the search engines see comemnts as fresh content and search engines love fresh content.
A great plugin to encourage comments is Brians Threaded Comments plugin http://meidell.dk/archives/2006/12/19/brians-threaded-comments-159/
That plug in allows people to reply to a specific comment vs posting at the bottom of the page – it makes it more like a conversation. (Jim I suggest you install this on your site)
Cheers
Chris
Chris Stirlings last blog post..Home-Based Internet Business – How to Earn a Profit
SEO is really very important for ranking & traffic
I haven’t kept my blog name in the end of the title or anywer in the title of the posts … i use the same title of the post as meta title
good info shared …
I had trouble with the rewrite so I just skipped it. It kept giving me a 500 Internal Error or it wouldn’t work.
EmmaBs last blog post..Biggest Entrecard contest ever
I just figured out what happened. Apparently Namecheap does the redirect automatically via the dns settings. Cool!
Its a nice post, but I don’t agree with the submitting to search engines aspect. Its a waste of time and effort…once you have some links coming in they’ll find it all on their own. Submitting a sitemap to google through webmaster tools can and does help more pages get indexed, though, so I do agree with that part.
Noah´s last blog ..CRM Systems Should Be About Relationships With People
thanks for your information your information might be very helpful for the SEO peoples. with your information anyone can get the good ranking thanks for your information.
Great post. This is help me with the SEO services I provide for my clients. Thanks!
I created a tutorial on my blog on how to install and set up WordPress. This tutorial is geared toward business owners who want to set up their own website at a low cost.
SLO SEO´s last blog ..10 Best Premium WordPress Themes For Small Business
Twitter: @jimvesting
July 5, 2010 at 5:31 pm #
Sounds good! Thanks for sharing that information, I’m sure people here will find it useful.