SEO for blogs

In The 5 Basic Steps of SEO Part 1 we took a look at the importance of tagging and permalink structure for making a SEO friendly blog. Now let me tell you about one simple Search Engine Optimization tip that if you take the ten minutes necessary to learn and make it a habit, will improve your posts rank significantly in search engines like Google and Yahoo.

Apply This HTML Code Tip For Better Blog Headings:

When you write articles for your blog I bet you use Bold (B) to highlight your headings. Actually there is a special HTML code which you can use to highlight your headings in a way search engines like to see. These are called heading tags and work like below:

<h1>Heading goes here</h1>

You may also use “h2″ and “h3″ to distinguish lower heading types like sub-headings. When you write articles to your blog, switch to the WordPress plain text editor (Switch from Visual to HTML). This way you can handle the code. Whenever you need a heading just use <h1>, <h2>, or <h3> tags. Also make sure that your blog design makes the main title of each article a <h1> tag. Let me tell you how you can check this:

• Login to your WordPress admin
• Go to Design
• Click on Theme Editor
• Open the Single Post (Or Single.php)
• Make sure you get a copy of the existing codes, before making any changes
• If you notice that your blog titles are wrapped up with a h2 tag, replace it with a h1 tag
• Should look very similar to this one: <h1><a href=”<?php the_permalink() ?>” rel=”bookmark” title=”Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>”><?php the_title(); ?></a></h1

Use Heading Tags To Anchor Certain Keywords

You can use heading tags to anchor certain keywords in your blog post as more relevant – the words you want your post to rank well for in searches.If this is a challenging topic for you, I suggest you to re-edit one of your older posts headings. Remember this formula  <h2>Keyword</h2>.

Find a heading, and replace the bold you used, and instead wrap the heading around a <h2> at the start and a </h2>. Did you notice the change? If not, don’t worry, Google robots will notice the change very easily.

This is applicable for your blog titles too. Use some certain keywords in your blog post titles, and wrap them around with <h1> tag, and your blog post is more SEO friendly.

Since I studied SEO this is a simple technique I usually apply. When Google and other search engine robots visit your blog, they value the content in heading tags as more significant indicators of what your blog article should rank for.

What is next in Part 3? I will introduce you one great WP SEO plugin which even All In One SEO is not capable of doing what this plugin easily does. Stay tuned for more SEO and blogging tips.