The term “search engine optimization” or SEO for short, describes the process of increasing both the quality and quantity of traffic to your website or blog. It is the technique of making your content easier to find for search engines like Google. Well optimized web pages will appear on the first pages of the search engine listings. The ultimate goal is to bring people to your blog who are interested in the content you offer.

Here are a few tips on making the most of SEO on your blog.

1. Write descriptive post titles.

This is the single most important thing you can do to optimize your blog for search and drive more traffic. Imagine what you might type into Google to find your post and include it in the title of your blog post. Clear, descriptive titles aren’t necessarily clever or fun, but they will get more people to your blog.

2. Use image titles that match content in your post.

Title images with one or more words from your post title to increase the “relevance” of your post. This will help your blog index better against that term.

3. Use SEO keywords in your content.

Include the key terms from your image and title in the body of your post, especially early in a post. You will have a greater chance of coming up higher in the search engine rankings. To find keywords, use Google AdWords’ Keyword Tool.

4. Post regularly.

The more often you update your blog, the more often your pages are indexed by the search engines, and the higher your ranking climbs. That is why blogs are inherently more search-engine friendly than a websites. Most websites aren’t updated for weeks, if not months, whereas many bloggers post new content on a regular basis.

5. Alert or “Ping” a variety of websites every time you publish a new post.

Luckily, TypePad makes this easy: choose “Weblogs” in the navigation, then click on “Configure” and then “Publicity.” Choose “Publicized” and, every time you publish a post, TypePad will alert the search engines for you.

6. Link to other quality related content.

There are many reasons to link to other sites or posts on the web, and optimizing your blog for search is one of them. When you link to quality sites or articles on the web that are relevant to the content of your post, you increase your chances of a higher ranking. Simply linking to articles or sites that aren’t related to your post topic does not help.

7. Generate inbound links.

An inbound link is a link from another blog or website that points to yours. If that blog or website is highly viewed, the link is “counted” more heavily and your search engine ranking rises as a result. Inbound links are not directly in your control; someone else has to link to you. That said, if you build goodwill within the blogging community and write consistently good content, chances are good that you’ll begin to generate inbound links.

8. Submit your blog to the major search engines.

You can further get your content out to the search engines by going to Google, Yahoo! or any of your favorite search engines and type in “submit blog.” You will be directed to a page that will allow you to submit your URL for indexing.

9. Keep trying different things and check your stats.

The most successful bloggers are continually trying new things reading what works for others, investigating top-rated blogs, and staying current on the newest developments in search engine technology. There is no single way to keep your ratings high; rather, it is a combination of all of them and a willingness to experiment that separates the most popular bloggers from the rest.

10. Stick with it.

Since so many people launch blogs and websites and abandon them within weeks or months, part of the calculation used to rank pages is how long the site has been around. If you keep blogging, your ranking will go up if you are still posting consistently after a year, and after two years, and so on. The hare got off to a faster start, but the turtle eventually wins the race.

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