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Although my blog is nearing to break in to alexa top 100k web sites, I am still not getting considerable traffic from Google and other search engines. Average organic traffic is around 8% and they are coming from keywords I never targeted for.

I do not have time to write everyday to get social media attention. Desperate for some Google love, I searched all over Internet to get some solid tips on SEO. After going through dozens of articles on “blog SEO” and ” wordpress SEO“, I did the following changes in my blog.

1. I changed my blog Title.
Title is the phrase you see in the top of your browser when you open a web page. My title used to be ” Turning cats into lions. Your success starts here.” Although it is a catchy title it has nothing to do with my targeted key words. So I changed it to a new one which includes few of my targeted keywords. Now it says “Money making ideas and opportunities to help you get started“.

2. I made the post titles to be H1 tags.
Any SEO expert will say how important it is to use H1 tags in your titles. By default it was H2. So I changed it to H1 with the help of my friend Nadeesha at rockfuse dot com. When I changed it to H1 initially it gave me a very ugly looking title.

To change that ugly H1 layout, go to your style sheet and find something like this,

{style type=”text/css”>
[!--
H1 { color: blue; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 16px }
-->

Change the properties to give it the look you always wanted.

3. Bold keywords.
In individual posts, I made sure to include a keyword in the first few sentences and I made it bold. I did repeat the keywords 3-4 times throughout the entire post and also made them bold. And I did the same thing towards the end of the post.

4. Optimized images and alt tags.
I normally tend to write long posts. I don't write just for the sake of publishing another new post and increase my posting frequency. So I always use few images in my posts to give readers a break.

See this post about drop shipping for an example. I started renaming these images to keywords I am targeting for. And I also started using the "alt tag" to it's maximum potential. These little things are important in blog SEO. Google still cannot read images. So when they come across an image they look at the image name and the alt name. So these days, I am going back to old posts and doing these necessary changes.

As bloggers, we tend to do lot of internal linking. They might be in the form of related posts or in the side bar or they might be links within the posts. When linking I started using keywords in Anchor texts.

For example, take a look at the previous paragraph. When I linked to a previous post without just using the “click here” phrase I used “drop shipping” as the anchor text. I learned that these all small tweaks add up in the final equation when it comes to best blog SEO practices.

6. I registered my domain for a lengthy period.
Google itself has mentioned that they are looking to the domain registration length when they are ranking web sites. There are too many web sites these days. Lot of them die within the first few months. If you register your domain for a lengthy period It gives an indication to Google that you are here for stay. Besides, it does not cost your more than $10 a year.

7. Solved the duplicate content issue in word press.
By default , word press and many other blogging platforms create dozens of different URL’s for the same content. Google will consider this as spamming, in order to avoid this problem use a robots text like this. It will not solve all your duplicate content issues but can consider as a good remedy.

This is what I have done in past few weeks and it has already started giving me results. Organic traffic has increased from just 8 % to 10.5% in this short time. I am expecting much better results once I get some more back links to my web site.

I have not mentioned any SEO techniques used out side the blog. These all are internal SEO attempts. I am sure I have missed many important points. You are welcome to share your ideas and enlighten us on the SEO work you have done in your site.

For more great articles on “blog SEO” and “wordpress SEO” please visit,
problogger
copyblogger
rockfuse

And also I found a great video on “blog seo” from mindvalleylabs.com, the only problem in this video is, they use overture to find keywords. Since it is no longer in use, you can use Google adwords keyword tool for the same purpose. This video is great. It explains how they come to the Google top ten results 10/10 times. Enjoy, And do not hesitate to share your knowledge on blog / wordpress SEO here.

Do not forget to read,
Are you making enough money from your blog?
Can you still make money from adsense?

Yahoo buzz, which was on beta for only few selected publishers has open their doors to the public now. With a Digg like voting system and with a desperate need to catching up with the times yahoo has done something which was much needed for the survival of Yahoo inc. Did people need another social media network? Absolutely no. But we should not be stupid enough to simply ignore a system introduced by the world’s no 1 internet company. Yes, Google is still playing No 2 to yahoo in terms of page views and visits.

Yahoo buzz is now open for billions of web masters who are already in the rat race for bringing in more traffic. All the top Gurus are now looking for a way to game the buzz system. Just like they did with Digg. Which explains why digg is showing the same content of same popular web sites again and again. No matter how many friends you have ,No matter how many shouts you send for a particular article, if you are a small publisher it is very hard to get to Digg’s front page these days. It is like Digg has already chosen all the publishers they want in their Front page.

Will it be possible to game the yahoo buzz system? You only need a yahoo account in order to vote. I know people who have dozens of yahoo accounts. And almost everyone have friends using yahoo accounts. Personally in my country I do not personally know anyone with a Digg account. But everyone is using yahoo mail accounts. Which is just what the system needed for a vote.

But Yahoo has done something smart. They do not consider votes as the only way of moving stories to the home page. They take the search volumes and the emails shared when choosing the stories to be featured in their home page. And most importantly these stories will be in the yahoo home page. Not just in the yahoo buzz. Which will be an amazing boost for the publisher since yahoo is the No1 visited web site in the world. I would trade anything to be featured in the yahoo home page. (hmm. I did not really mean that.)

So how we add our posts to yahoo buzz?

There are no 3rd party widgets at the moment. But I am sure all existing services are in the process of adding yahoo buzz to their code. For the time being you have too add it manually which is not a difficult thing to do at all. Go to the yahoo buzz buttons page here, and select the button image you want to use.

Scroll down to the end of the page to see the yahoo buzz button I am using.(which is the best in my opinion.)

Once you select the button you will be given the script code which you have to paste in your site. Not like in Digg you will have to manually enter your post’s URL here. Replace it with the line “ARTICLEURL” in the button code. That’s it. Now, anyone with a yahoo account (Literally the whole internet population.) can vote for you. Within the next couple of weeks internet marketing gurus will publish ebooks on “how to get traffic from yahoo buzz”. And most will update their existing books with a new chaptor on “yahoo Buzz”.

But will all this hype be enough to kill Digg,the Already established No 1 voting system online. I cannot predict the future. But there is no such thing as “established No 1″ in this world. Who knew China would give USA a hard time like this in Olympics medals table. I say Yahoo buzz have a fair chance of beating Digg in the long run. With that said, if Digg can make their system more democratic and if yahoo failed to capitalize on opportunities (Common trend in Yahoo for the past few years.) Digg will be emerged the winner.

While the world is figuring out who is the best, I am submitting my stories to both Digg and Yahoo buzz. Helping my self to become a winner.

If you enjoy the post please digg and give a buzz on yahoo :-) And if you own a web site do not forget to add the all important “yahoo buzz” button to your posts.

—–New Update —–
It is being 2 hours since I publish this post. Yahoo Buzz started sending me quality traffic for this.
For the time being it is 6 times more than the Digg traffic I am getting. I will post the latest results after 24 hours. Buzz me up till then :-)

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