How to optimise your blog for search engines

Search engine optimization, SEO, is not the black art many people think it is. Back in the early days of the World Wide Web, people tricked search engines by repeating the same keywords over and over again in the page, meta keywords and hid the long lists of keywords from the readers to improve their search engine rankings.

Happily, this doesn't work anymore. The search engines are improving their ranking methods and they are becoming smarter. But there are things we can do on our blogs to help the search engines find our sites and content better. This is what SEO is all about. With SEO, you are helping people to find exactly what they are looking for. When you're publishing something, you're putting it out for other people. And that blog post, video, article or audio will not help anyone unless they find it, right? If people search for the exact information you are providing, but don't find it, because you don't have the foundation in place, your content will lose much of its value.

Yes, there are ways to promote a blog and get people into your site than just the search. But think of it this way: wouldn't it be great if someone is looking for an answer to a question they have or a solution to an urgent problem they are facing, and when they search for that information, they would find exactly what they're looking for? I think so. The secret is to understand that search engine optimization is helping the search engines deliver your content in front of the people looking for that exact information. It is as simple as that. If you put a title on your post with words people type into a search when they want to find exactly what you give them in the text, you're doing it right.

If you want to ensure that there are people looking for the information you provide, you do keyword research. You are looking for keywords and keywords phrases people actually type in the search engine. You can do this with free keyword research tool from Google, for example. Think what you would type to a search if you would be looking for the information you wrote. When you include such keyword phrase in your post headline, you have done yourself, your blog, and the visitors who now can find the information more easily from the search engines, a favor.

Apart from writing valuable and unique content, you don't have to do much else, because it is done automatically in the background, taken that you have the blog SEO basics in order, most importantly a SEO friendly theme or template that displays the title of the page the right way. The title of the page, shows as the title tag in the HTML code, is what you see on the top of the browser window. If the page is not setup correctly, that title won't be the same as your blog post title for example.

When the title tag is taken care of by the blog settings, you just have to write content that will help people , articles that people want to read, and ensure you have titled your post properly. The title is important because it will tell people what your post is about. Because the title is the first thing people see and decide whether or not they should click on it and read the whole story, search engines value the title as well. And that's why it's important to put focus on it, to ensure the search engines find your content and index it the right way, and more importantly, for the people will then see information they're looking for.

There is more to blog SEO than just this, publishing great content with amazing titles , but if you don't do this, everything else will be for nothing. And you don't have to worry about putting a lot of the same keyword phrases in the post. That might even hurt you. You are writing and helping people, keep that in mind.

SEO should not be comprehended as something you do for a machine. It should be about helping the people who use the search . In fact, it should even be called search engine optimization, just optimization. With proper blog SEO, making sure your theme or template is optimized the right way, that is what you'll be doing; optimizing to help people find the answers they are looking for.

Antti Kokkonen helps people and their businesses to become more effective and more profitable online by focusing on all aspects of online media, including blogging, social media and Internet marketing. Antti has also published an in-depth article about blog SEO, which you should check out now.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Antti_Kokkonen