If your blog is part of your Web site and optimized with relevant keywords, it can help your site rank higher in search engines. Remember that the most important goal of your blog is to create interesting content. Artificially inserting keywords will turn readers away, and you might be penalized by search engines. So write as you would speak, and fit your keywords in naturally.
Here are some ways you can use your keywords to your greatest advantage.
Give your posts descriptive titles.
Search engines give headlines more weight than regular text when ranking search results. Use targeted keyword phrases to describe your topic.
Use your keywords in text links for inbound and outbound links.
Using text links instead of graphics for your navigation links will improve your links’ relevance with search engine spiders. Also include your best keywords in the link text that navigates to pages optimized for those keywords.
Use your keywords in all tags.
- Title — Each page should have its own title tag, with a unique keyword.
- Description — Include keyword phrases in the description tags once or twice.
- Keyword — Add your most important words and phrases to the keyword tag.
- Heading — Keywords in the heading tags have more impact than regular text.
- Alt — Search engines can't read images, but they do crawl alt tags.
Bold keywords in several places.
Bold text is given more weight than regular text by search engines, so put your keywords into a boldface phrase once or twice on the page.
Use your keywords in text early and often.
Use your keywords once or twice in the first sentence of text. A good rule of thumb is to repeat the keyword two to three times in each paragraph, while making sure the text flows appropriately.
Now that you know how to make your blog visible in the search engine results, it's time to create a plan for maintaining a regular blog readership.