Yesterday we posted the first part of this article about posting search engine friendly blogs.  Today we continue the series: 

3. URL Structure

Having a clear, “readable” URL structure is important as it helps improve both the usability and Search engine friendliness of your blog post – How? 

• URLs containing keywords will appear in the search results (with your keywords in bold)

• Part of the search engine algorithm for ranking web pages includes keywords in URL’s. 

What about my blog posts? 

• Don’t use overly long URLs, ideally they should be no longer than 3-5 words (for WordPress bloggers,  use the “post slug” option to customise your URLs).

• Don’t use capital letters in your URLs  

• Avoid putting dates in your URLs (unless your posts are time sensitive and it is appropriate to do so). 

Here are more important SEO tips for bloggers to follow: 

1. Focus on posting unique content.  Ignore any approaches from PR agencies, or similar, offering you a ready-made press release or blog post as it is likely to be ‘doing the rounds’ and will not be unique content.   Far better for you to research the subject you intend to blog about, including other blog posts on the same subject, then write your own post, in your own words.  This will make your own blog stronger and more respected by fellow bloggers.  Remember also that Google penalises those websites / blogs which have duplicate content. 

2. Link to your previously published posts. The search engines find and index blog posts by following links.  It makes sense therefore for you to link to any previous posts you have published about the same topic from the current post.   This will not only encourage readers to browse to your older blog posts, it will also reinforce your reputation as an expert in the subject. 

3. Linking to posts on other blogs as well. Linking is the basis of all good SEO.  Bloggers are always eager to know who is linking to them and are likely to visit your blog and your website to find out more about you.  WordPress have plug-ins such as Zemanta and Arkayne which can help you with this. 

4. Never link to suspicious sites. While all linking is generally a good thing, linking to dubious websites will do nothing to enhance your online reputation.  Most new blogs will be ‘attacked’ by the usual suspects requesting backlinks – gambling sites, health sites, dating sites, online medication sites etc.  Make sure you are comfortable in being associated with the people you are going to link with! 

5. Make sure that your pages are quick to load. Google has recently brought ‘page load speed’ into its algorithm so do not include large file size images in your posts.  If your page or post is slow to load the search engines (and your visitors) will not wait around and your page will not be seen.  Make sure to use quality web / blog hosting and do not always go for the cheapest as it will rarely be the best. 

If you want to include images in your posts make sure the file size is less than 100kb and if you are using WordPress install one of the ‘caching’ plug-ins available. 

Remember SEO is all about making it easy for people, and search engines, to find, read and understand your blog posts.  If you do this you will be producing good quality content  that people will value and link to. 

Tomorrow we will conclude this series of posts with part eight which will be about using Social Media to attract new readers for your blog.  

If you would like more information about how blogging could help your business please leave a message below or visit WSI IMS – WSI Internet Marketing Services for UK Businesses.