Top 10 Blog Optimization Tips (Part 1)

I had an opportunity to see Stephen Spencer’s presentation on blog optimization called Making Blogging and RSS Pay Off: Driving Traffic and Sales Through Optimized Blogs and Feeds while I was in SES Toronto. This notable web marketing blogger offers some fantastic blog optimization tips during his presentation.

However, knowing that time is short and all of you in internet land might not have the time to sit down and take a look at the blog presentation, I’ve compiled a top 10 list of tips for bloggers, which I will highlight over two separate blog posts.

So without further ado, here is part 1 of the Top 10 Blog Optimization Tips:

1. Name of Your Blog – Use something keyword friendly if at all possible. For example, Ten Golden Rules uses the keyword phrase “internet marketing strategy” in our blog name.
2. Blog Title Tags – Tag names/keywords should go in the title of the post. If you use WordPress, download the SEO Title Tag Plugin to customize and make your blog title tags more search engine friendly.
3. Blog URLs – Make sure your blogging software produces the URLs with hyphens and not underscores. If you’re not willing to take Spencer’s word on the subject, Matt Cutts, Google software engineer, explains why it’s better to use hyphens in URLs.
4. Anchor Text – Use keywords in your anchor text when you link to past blog posts, other bloggers (like Stephen Spencer) and back to your corporate site. Neat-o tool is a great tool for checking backlinks and anchor text.
5. Tag Blog Posts – Tag or label your blog posts with relevant keywords, and use tag clouds to group relevant blog posts together. If you use WordPress, Spencer recommends using the Ultimate Tag Warrior Plugin.