Improving the Search Engine Rankings of Your Blog

Bloggers who are interested in reaching a large audience with their blog should consider paying special attention to search engine optimization of their blog. Reaching a large audience may be a priority for a number of different reasons. One of the obvious reasons to attempt to generate increased traffic to a blog is to generate a profit. Bloggers who rely on high blog traffic for their revenue are obviously interested in increasing traffic. However, bloggers who create their blog to promote a cause may also be interested in increasing traffic simply to allow their message to reach a larger audience. Regardless of the reason to want to increase traffic, one of the best ways to do this is by optimizing the blog for search engines. This article will discuss the importance of search engine rankings and offer tips for optimizing a blog. 

Why Search Engine Rankings are Important

The importance of high search engine rankings is they can contribute to increased Internet traffic to the blog. This is because Internet users who use search engines to find information on a particular topic are much more likely to visit websites which appear on the first page of the search results than they are to visit websites which appear on subsequent pages of the search results. The websites appearing on the first page of the results are likely to get the most traffic. However, Internet users are not likely to search through more than a page or two of the search results when looking for more information on a particular subject.

High search engine rankings essentially act as free advertisement for a blog or website. This is because many website users rely on popular search engines to assist them in finding useful information on the Internet. The search engines apply complex algorithms to evaluate websites and rank them accordingly for specific search terms. As a result Internet users put a great deal of value on the search results produced and trust these results to lead them to the best available websites relevant to the keywords they specified in the search. 

Tips for Optimizing a Blog for Search Engines

One of the most common ways to optimize a blog or website for search engines is through the use of relevant keywords. Specifically the practice of applying specific keyword densities to the content of the blog is a common search engine optimization tactic employed. Blog owners and others who attempt to optimize their websites do not always agree on the optimal density for keywords but many believe a percentage of approximately 2%-3% is appropriate. 

Another method for optimizing a search engine optimization is to place relevant keywords into the code of the website. This includes the title tags and META tags. This is important because search engines often consider the prominence of keywords when evaluating a website. This refers to the location in which the keywords first appear. Placing keywords early in the content of the website is helpful but it is important to note the search engines view the code first so keywords appearing before the body of the blog will be crawled first by the search engines. 

Blog owners can also help to increase their search engine rankings by generating back links to their blog. This can be accomplished in a number of different ways. One way to do this is to find other websites willing to place a link to the blog on their website. This is beneficial because many search engines factor the number of links to a website into their ranking algorithm because these links are considered to be one website vouching for the validity of another website. Some website owners may be willing to do this in return for a link to their website on your blog. This is known as reciprocal linking and some search engines may not value this link as highly as a link which is not reciprocated. There are also some link exchange programs but these links may not be beneficial because many search engines consider the rank of the website linking to your blog. Therefore, if the website linking to your blog does not rank well, the back link will not improve search engine rankings significantly. 

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