TOP 14 SEO tips and tricks ~ Official Notes

Search engine optimization can seem daunting, but you can take a number of simple actions to boost your rankings. Try the suggestions described in the following list on your own blog and start driving search traffic to your posts:

Use your keyword or keyword phrase in your blog post titles. Search engines weigh titles more heavily than other text, so do your best to include your keywords in your post titles.
Use your keyword or keyword phrase within the first paragraph of your blog post. Search engines value the text within the first few hundred characters of your post more heavily than other text, so be sure to repeat your keywords in this part of your post.
Use your keyword or keyword phrase as hyperlinks within your blog posts. Make sure that the hyperlinks within your blog posts include your keywords when it’s appropriate. For example, rather than write “Read more here,” with the word here as the hyperlink, write “Follow the link to read more about parenting tips,” with parenting tips as the hyperlink. Search engines value linked text higher than normal text, so use that concept to your advantage by using keywords in your links.
Use heading tags and include your keywords within them. Rather than simply make headings and subheads boldface, apply the HTML H1, H2, and H3 tags to that text. These tags are valued higher by search engines than normal or bolded text is.
Use your keyword or keyword phrase around links in your posts. Search engines value the text surrounding links within your posts higher than normal text, so if you can’t use your keywords within a link, try to use them in the text surrounding the links.
Use your keyword or keyword phrase to name images used in your posts. Take a moment to rename images used in your blog posts to include your keywords when those keywords are relevant to the image. Enter a descriptor using your keywords in the alt tag (the alternative text if the image doesn’t appear in the person’s Web browser) of your post’s HTML.
Include your keyword phrase in your blog’s URL. If you can get a domain name that includes your keywords, you hit the jackpot. When possible, try to include keywords in some part of each blog post’s URL.
Ask for incoming links from similar sites. Leverage your online relationships,as described earlier in this chapter, to boost incoming links to your blogs. Links from topically similar blogs and Web sites are weighted more heavily than those from irrelevant sites. Similarly, links from popular blogs and Web sites are weighted more heavily than links from blogs and Web sites that have little traffic and lower page ranks.
Use variations of your keyword or keyword phrase. Don’t feel tied down to a specific keyword or keyword phrase. Search engine algorithms are intelligent, and they accordingly understand and rank variations of a word or phrase used within your blog posts.
Intralink your blog posts. Although links within your own blog aren’t valued as highly as external links by search engines are, they’re still important. Internal links are given some weight in search engine rankings, but more importantly, they lead visitors to more content, which can provide more opportunities for visitors to find content of interest that they want to link to from their own blogs or Web sites.
Post frequently. Your posting frequency has an indirect effect on your search engine traffic. With each new keyword-optimized blog post, you increase the chances that someone will find your blog, enjoy the content and link to it, and generate more incoming links, which search engines value highly.
Comment on other blogs and in online forums and groups. Commenting is useful in terms of indirect search engine optimization because it can lead new visitors to your blog who might enjoy what they read there and link to it from their own blogs and Web sites — thereby boosting your search rankings.
Build relationships. With each new relationship you build online, you develop another portal for sharing information and potential incoming links.
Write useful content. The bottom line is that you should write posts that people want to link to.