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skyrocket your traffic

If there is one thing common in top bloggers is that their blogs are well ranked for some specific keywords in main search engines Google and Yahoo. It does not make sense at all to compete with them at those keywords. However, you can still apply some basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques to skyrocket incoming traffic to your blog. Here are the 5 easy and applicable basic steps of SEO for your blog:

Permalink Structure:

This is one of the most important factors on SEO for blogs. I have recently updated my WP blog’s permalink structure as below, and organic traffic growth was remarkable:

• Login to your WordPress, and click on “Settings”
• Click on “Permalinks”
• Select “Custom Structure” and insert this “/%category%/%postname%.html”
• Now go to “Sitemap XML”, and click on “rebuild the sitemap”
• This will update the search engine robots about your permalink structure change
• If you are using Google Webmaster Tools, you need to update that one too with your new permalink structure

Tagging:

I notice that not enough importance was given to tagging by many bloggers when writing a blog post. Believe it or not tagging is very crucial for increasing your search engine traffic. Always think about the tags first before writing a blog post. Start with asking this simple question to yourself “If I were looking for this post in Google or Yahoo, which keywords I would be choosing”. Answer those question, and then put those keywords into your blog post. Do not forget to add those keywords as your blog post tags too. You won’t believe your eyes, how this small tip will bring so much traffic to your blog.

However, if you use tags which do not appear on your blog post, this has no value at all. You can not cheat these smart search engine robots. Also you should be careful not to exceed 5 tags per post. Ideally you should put 3 tags per post. Your tags should be two-three words long search terms.

Lets give an example from this post. Possible tags are “seo for blogs”, “search engine optimization”, “permalink structure”. If you read my blog post, you will notice that these search terms exist on my post. This is what SEO people call “bull’s eye”.

My SEO posts will continue with some easy to use SEO techniques and useful information. Stay tuned, and do not forget to subscribe to Search For Blogging RSS feeds or mail list(sign up form on the top and sidebar) to be notified about the next part.