Posts Tagged ‘blog tips’

SEO – Is It As Important As It Once Was Or Is Social Media The Way to Go?

SEO (search engine optimization) is something I am continually trying to improve upon. I experiment with different approaches on both of my blogs to see what works and what doesn’t. It is a tedious process but something I am convinced I will someday master, or at least have fun trying. Sadly, I have been reading a little more and more from different blogs that SEO is not as vital to blog growth as it once was. The recent popularity of sites such as Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, MySpace (which is losing popularity to Twitter and Facebook),  EzineArticles, eHow and other similar sites can do more for a blog’s popularity in several days then months of great SEO work. The “viral” nature of how stories and/or videos catch on is truly mind-blowing in many cases.

I will not give up on SEO tactics. Proper search engine optimization will provide long-term benefits. Submission of my posts to social bookmarking sites, the use of Twitter and writing for ezine type sites will help but will not replace tried and true practices. Why not use both equally? I read a good post called “15 Step by Step SEO Tips For Writing Blog Posts” which I feel incorporate good tips for both practices for the modern SEO approach.

Incorporating all tactics for The Complete SEO Package

The way most see it, these practices are one in the same. Submission of posts to social media sites of any kind can help with link building, an important SEO tactic however the post or article can become viral regardless of the SEO used. You cannot go wrong when you utilize the complete package!

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Linking to Blogs Through Comment Submission

Linking is an important part of SEO

Linking to other blogs in your niche is an important step in SEO (search engine optimization) however it is not always easy. Many blogs do not easily give out links, fearing it will reduce their authority (rankings with search engines). You can try to combat this by commenting on other blogs within your niche, since most blogs include a section in which you can enter the url of your blog or web-page. This will allow you to insert YOUR LINK on their blog.

Now before you go out and make senseless comments on other blogs, please follow these rules:

• Keep your comments related to the posts on which you are commenting
• Do not say “Nice Post”, “Great Job”, “Nicely Done”, “Well Written” or anything similar and leave
• Keep your url limited to the url field and do not write it in the comment field
• Provide a quality or value laden comment and do not comment for comment’s sake
• Don’t use the “cookie cutter” comment style across different blogs; write unique comments since each blog is unique itself
• Do not just enter your home page into the url field, use a post url or your “About” url

Believe me, people will know if you are just blatantly using them for linking. Most bloggers know why we are commenting but if you give them something worth publishing, they will do so by approving the comment during moderation. Spam blogging is huge and many webmasters spam comments hoping for the link. Do not get upset if the blog does not approve your comment.

One caveat to linking through comments is the “nofollow” tag given by many blogs. A nofollow tag  does not mean it is worthless to leave a comment. Your link can still generate traffic to your site and maybe one of those visitors will link to you.  The more traffic you generate, the greater chance you have of someone else linking to you. If would like to see the links within a blog you can. My friend, a blog developer and internet marketer, told me of this tool and its great. It will give you all of the details of any given site’s back links which will allow to judge if nofollow tags are implemented.

Do not forget to encourage commenting on your blog! It takes time to generate a steady stream of comments. As you can see, I am not loaded with comments either but they will come. I am currently trying different commenting systems to entice comments. On this blog I use Disqus and on my fatherhood blog I use JSKit’s new Echo system. I guess we will find out which one I prefer because when I choose, the same system will used on both blogs.

Start here – leave your comment and your link and then jump over to my other blog and do the same on that system. Tell me which you prefer, as a commenter.

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