There are more than 175 million blogs on the Internet and most of them are indexed by the major search engines. If the purpose of your blog is to promote your brand, products or services, you must optimize its presence. Similar in concept to search engine optimization (SEO) for websites, blog optimization is rapidly rising in importance.
Obviously, good content is crucial. You can have the greatest optimization in the world, but if your content is uninteresting, repetitive, poorly written or uninformative, your blog will be unable to attract and retain your target audience. Many companies expend enormous effort to attract new viewers to their blog (or website) only to fail to retain them ”“ or convert them into prospects ”“ because of inferior content. Don”™t fall into this trap!
Be leery of free WordPress themes
It”™s always nice to save a few dollars by getting something for free. Often, free website and blog themes have a nice appearance or impressive features. Under the surface, they may have severe design and implementation problems. Creating themes is a time consuming endeavor and the people building them aren”™t altruistic. They are either trying to promote their name ”“ which can be present in hidden links to their website or trying to induce you to buy a premium site. Usually, they take shortcuts in the blog design including its configuration capabilities for WordPress optimization.
Since a premium blog is usually less than $90, buying a premium blog is usually money well spent as it could be the difference between a page 12 and a page 1 search-engine listing. A premium blog template is also much more likely to successfully load useful plugins than a free one. Most premium themes have a limited time support and free lifetime upgrade policy. This latter policy can be particularly useful since theme developers are constantly adding new features and capabilities to their themes while simultaneously fixing any reported problems.
Here are some starting points for WordPress themes you may want to consider: diythemes.com (optimum SEO), socratestheme.com (for blog monetization), and buddypress.org (open source, plugins).
Use high-quality SEO plugins
One of the great features of WordPress is that it is designed to accept and utilize plugins that can greatly extend its capabilities. There are plugins for almost anything you can think of, most of them being available from the WordPress.org plugin directory. Unfortunately, the sheer number of plugins is rather overwhelming (there are more than 100,000) and there is no way of judging their effectiveness other than the limited ”“ but useful ”“ user feedback provided on the site. Nevertheless, there are some widely used SEO plugins you may want to consider. All in one SEO pack (the free version) and Platinum SEO pack are two of the most widely used routines.
Utilize keywords in your blog posts
Keywords are an important part of SEO marketing for both blogs and websites. As a general rule, you should embed them in your content text and make sure they are prominent in your article headings. A high density of keywords (i.e. the repeated presence of keywords) appropriately placed in your articles along with the inclusion of keywords in your footer will improve your SEO effectiveness.
Include social links
Make sure that you include links to the key social networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and whatever other networks are appropriate). Two of the most commonly used and readily configurable plugins are sharethis and addthis.
Design
The readability of your blog is also very important. Your design should be simple and easy to follow. Make sure your keywords appear above the fold. If you accept advertising, don”™t overdo it. Intrusive advertising will annoy your audience and result in lost readers. If you do use advertising or affiliate marketing, make sure your links all include the command: rel=nofollow.
Since most blogs are designed for the display of key articles on the home page, make sure your most important articles (or at least their first few lines) reside on the home page. Article continuation and navigation links should be available from every page. Most well-designed sites offer links to key articles or their most recent articles on every page.
Stay connected. Remain in front of your audience
One frequently overlooked aspect of a blog is how to remain in front of your audience. It is not uncommon for people to follow a link to your blog from an article, tweet, mention or some other means. Even if they like your content and many aspects of your blog, the majority of them will never return and most likely will quickly forget your blog name and address.
One way of staying connected with your readers is through email and social media. Offer them something so they leave you their email address. Should they comment on an article, send them an email follow up (also comment on their comment) and invite them to stay connected. Using email and an occasional newsletter or notice to drive them to your website and blog is a very effective way of staying in front of them.
A successful blog can be an extremely persuasive marketing tool. It can generate and help retain new business, new eyeballs and much buzz. Ensuring that your blog is optimized for search engines and keywords will greatly augment its success and growth.
Bruce Newman is the vice president at The Productivity Institute L.L.C. in Carmel. He is also the editor of the Productivity Institute Newsletter, a free content-is-king newsletter and thought leader. Follow him on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and the Productivity Institute blog. Bruce can be reached at bnewman@prodinst.com.
Nothing beats Shareaholic. Love that WordPress plugin!