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This is a guest post from Joel Carl. If you’re interested in writing an article for this blog, feel free to use the contact form. You will be linked to appropriately.

The Fundamentals of Blog SEO

Blogs are the beez-neez as far as the major search engines are concerned. Google, yahoo and MSN especially love blogs because they constantly provide fresh content and blogs have built in software that pings the search engines each time a new post or page is published.

In a way, blogs are SEO friendly right out the box. This is true, they are SEO friendly, but they still require some fundamental plugins and adjustments to make them 100% SEO optimized. This is where you are going to get ahead of your rivals and into google’s favor!

We will discuss the plugins and adjustments very soon, but firstly we need to understand the fundamentals of blog SEO.

SEO Fundamentals

• Consistent regular content: Blogs which are consistently updates with fresh content are recognised by the search engines and crawled more regularly. Obviously fresh content is also adding value for your readers. Search Engines LOVE fresh content.

• XML sitemaps: An XML sitemap is a small file on your website which provides a list of URLs which notifies search engines when fresh content is posted. Each time fresh content is added, the sitemap is updated. Search engines love sitemaps because they only need to spider this small file to discover the new content. Major blogging platforms have plugins available which easily setup and rebuild your xml sitemap.

• Duplicate content: Blogs can face problems with duplicate content, meaning that the same content is on several pages on your blog. This happens because you have category, archive and tag pages. Search engines may penalise blogs for this. With smart SEO, we can noindex these pages and allow the search engines to simply index the main page or post. The mighty wordpress platform has a plugin called “All in One SEO” which allows you to simply check a box and noindex these pages.

• Links: Internal and external linking are important for SEO purposes. Firstly, with linking you can direct your readers to the more important pages on your website. The search engines also follow these links around your websites which helps them find out exactly which pages are most important on your site. External linking to other websites is also looked on favorably by the search engines. Search engines can penalise you for having no outbound links as they like to see “natural” looking websites. It is tough to do though, because you are directing your visitors away from your blog. For SEO purposes, sure google likes to see it, but there are many reasons not to. Its a compromise really. Here is what I do – whenever I have an outgoing link, I will make sure that the link opens in a new window – this way the visitor will still have access to your website on an open browser.

• Anchor text: Super important!! Rather than using anchor text such as “CLICK HERE”, you should be using keywords in the anchor text. We will be covering this topic in greater detail in upcoming tutorials.

• RSS feeds: Each blog contains an RSS feed – this is a huge advantage over a static website. It gives you another chance to retain visitors who subscribe to your feed.

Tomorrow, we will cover 15 wordpress plugins to SEO boost your site and drive organic traffic.

This is a guest post from Joel Carl. If you’re interested in writing an article for this blog, feel free to use the contact form. You will be linked to appropriately.

Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is just as crucial for blogs as it is for standard websites. We all love getting free traffic from the search engines, but most of us simply don’t get enough because our SEO is just not cutting it. SEO is more than a skill, it is an art and a wholistic understanding of how the major search engines view and rank sites.

• Firstly you need to put yourself in google’s shoes. If you were a part of the google team – what would be your number 1 priority?

“Provide relevant and useful information for google users”

So you need to do that! If you can consistently provide quality content, google will reward you. There are some crucial tips you need to follow in order to be found – we will cover that soon.

• Second thing you need to know : Google is smarter than you and always will be! If you think you can beat the google system, you are wrong!

• Third thing you need to know : Google loves to reward the good guys. If you are providing useful and relevant information, google wants to reward you with free traffic!

I’m sure you have heard of all the black-hat techniques that webmasters use to beat the google system, sure these things can work sometimes and for a limited time, but if you are trying to create a long-term stream of google traffic, you need to be providing quality and consistent information for your visitors.

Now it is just a matter of helping google “find you”.

Tomorrow’s Blog Post will cover how you can SEO optimize your blog to maximize search engine traffic.

This is a guest post from Joel Carl. If you’re interested in writing an article for this blog, feel free to use the contact form. You will be linked to appropriately.

Many bloggers, especially beginners are faced with the dilemma of whether to get a free hosted blog or to fork out the money and get your own hosting and domain.

Free blogs such as wordpress.com, blogspot and typepad offer free hosted blogs which can be suitable as they reduce the technical overheads. This is especially appealing to those with little to invest and even less in tecnhical knowledge.

Whilst it may be free now, if you put considerable work into your blog and build up a following, you will soon realise that getting a free hosted blog was the worst decision you ever made.

Here’s why:

• You have serious lack of control over hosted blogs.

• What happens when you want to get a custom design and actually control what your visitors see? Having the ability to customize your blog is especially important when it comes to monetizing your blogs. Customization allows you to smoothly integrate your products, affiliate pages and other money making pages into your blog design. You can make your blog aesthetically pleasing aswell as highly functional.

• What happens if the hosting provider gets shut down? What happens to your blog posts from the last 2 years? What happens to all that page rank, authority and organic traffic you built up? It could all be gone in a heart beat. Go back to square 1 and start again?

• If your blog becomes popular, suddenly you are getting an influx of visitors and the number of simultaneous connections allowed may be limited by your host. Now your visitors get annoyed because they can’t view your blog, this will certainly test their love for your blog.

• With a self hosted domain, the possibilites of customisation are endless with thousands of themes, designs and plugins. If you plan to build a name/brand, then this will provide a much greater level of trust and credibility.

• You will be taken more seriously. I know some people will say “Hey I’ll follow a blog regardless of whether it is self hosted or not”. I understand that, but the harsh reality is – many people hate hosted blogs. If you choose a hosted blog – you better be packing some damn high quality in those posts, because content is going to be extremely crucial for you.

If you are still floundering around on a hosted blog, it is time to learn the ropes of hosting and domain registration, trust me, it really isn’t as daunting as you think and the rewards are endless.