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The year 2008 was a wonderful year for the blogging community. The community grew exponentially, and people who wouldn’t even think about writing on the web just a year ago caught on with the concept of blogging. The truth is, all the free and premium tools available on the WWW have made it easier for ordinary Joes and Janes to get started with blogging. Whether you are using Blogger or Wordpress (or another CMS for that matter), you have a wonderful piece of software at hand that makes writing and managing content easy and more efficient. But just because writing a blog has become easy, it doesn’t mean you should not take time to optimize your posts for search engines.
The SEO process remains the same for blog posts. Each blog post is a page of its own, which means you are going to have to optimize it properly to get free traffic through organic search engine listings. In fact, it’s always better the do a big chunk of the SEO work up front in order to get the best out of your posts. Here are the steps that I take in order write blog posts that are not only optimized for search engines but also have the best chance of getting ranked:
- Topic: figuring out what to write about is not that simple. If you have been blogging for a while, you probably have realized that. I personally use tools such as WordTracker, Google Adwords Keyword Tool, and Google Trends to figure out what to write about. Another useful tool here is WordTracker questions.
- Keyword Phrase(s): once I have figured out what I want to write about, then I will try to figure out what keyword(s) I should go for. I use SpyFu and WordTracker to find out keywords that are worth going for and the ones that my competitors are going for. SpyFu Kombat is one of the best tools you can use to figure out what you have in common with your competitors, and where they are beating you.
- On Page Optimization: Once I have decided what keyword phrases I am going for, I will try to stick with 3% keyword density and write my post around these keywords. I will also make sure the keywords are used in my title and in my URL (if possible). After I am done, I will update my Site-map to include the new page. Finally, I will make sure to link to other pages on my site, if possible.
- Off Page Optimization: Once you have taken time to write content, you want to make sure you give it a chance to succeed by promoting it on the Social media sites such as Twitter and FaceBook. I also write articles and use an article distribution service to promote my content.You can also work your network on Delicious and StumbleUpon to get some more eyes on your content.
The process above is the simplified version of the blueprint I use for my blog posts. At the end of the day, you should try to develop a blueprint that you comfortable with. For instance, some folks prefer to use Wordze, Keyword Discovery, or SEO Elite to come up with keywords. That’s perfectly fine if you are comfortable with those tools (you can see a list of SEO tools here). Some folks even pay to show up on Facebook or Stumbleupon. It really all comes down to your budget and what you are comfortable with. Having said that, you should never write a blog post without proper SEO Planning.









