Search engine optimization can be a formidable subject for bloggers. Following is an interview with an SEO expert, Gab Goldenberg, to help bloggers learn some of the basic steps to take to optimize their blogs for keyword searches. These SEO tips will help drive traffic to your blogs through higher search engine rankings.
Gab Goldenberg owns SEO ROI Services, and encourages you to subscribe to his blog's RSS feed. Some of his clients include this boutique hotel in downtown Montreal, and this business card software maker.
What is search engine optimization and how can it help bloggers?
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a process that helps get web pages ranked in the top results for a given search at Yahoo, Google or MSN. For example, if you search for the keywords "buy a computer" you'll find that NewEgg, About.com Best Buy, CompUSA and others are doing SEO to get found at the top of the results for that search.
SEO can help bloggers by exposing their content to a broader audience with all the rewards and ramifications that brings.
If you want to make money, doing SEO for your blog can help distribute your ideas and land you a book deal. It can get people looking for your services to find a post you wrote, and once they see your expertise, you'll often be contacted for a quote. For example, that's why most SEO experts blog (the exposure to potential clients is a good lead generator). There is a whole variety of ways to use SEO commercially; the only limit is your own creativity.
If you want to spread your ideas, SEO is a way to do it. If you want be famous for its own sake, SEO can get your name out there. (Consider that Wikipedia largely built its readership through succesful SEO). And if you want to be friends with me... er, just email me.
What is the most important thing that beginner bloggers should understand about SEO?
There are two steps to it:
- Ceating original content and sharing fresh ideas that haven't been addressed anywhere else before
- Building relationships (because that's how you get links, and search engines rank your site based on the number and quality of your links)
I'd say the second step far outweighs the first because friends will often link to friends' average, unoriginal, and sometimes plain mediocre material. But the bar people set before they'll link to strangers is incredibly high.
Let me give a couple of examples to back this up. I thought up a new way to buy/sell links under your competition's radar (explained in this post - Sneakiest Text Link Ad Disguise) that got a lot of attention in the SEO industry, including a coveted four-star link in SEOmoz's weekly link roundup.
Now let me put that into context. I created a similar tactic which I called cloning expired sites earlier. How much earlier? Well, that was published before I spoke at SMX West, which is an SEO trade show. The reason that I bring it up is because I hung out with Rebecca Kelley [of SEOmoz] at SMX. So when she linked to my post recently, while it was partly for its originality, it was also partly because we're on good terms.
Similarly, I wrote a round-up and linked to a bunch of fun and interesting people I met at SMX - just because they were nice and hanging out with me! And plenty of people do that - links are a kind of social currency on the web. And just as it takes money to make money, you need to link out and invest in building relationships before people will link back to you. I point out in passing that BoingBoing makes it its business to link out to others, and that's also how Yahoo got its start (the founders linked to sites they liked and made one of the first web directories). They seem to be doing all right!
