10 SEO Tips For New Blogger

Valid until 31 January 2015 (unless noted)

In this post I want to share my experience about SEO. Some of you maybe already know very well about SEO technique but let me (the newbie) share my experience about SEO. Hopefully this post can be useful and give you additional information to improve your site rank.

According to Wikipedia, SEO (search engine optimization) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Hmm.. I can say SEO like an art to improve our site recognition on search engine, gaining more traffic and to get listed in top ten (or at least in the first page of search engine result's search) in most popular search engine (especially Yahoo and Google). As you can see in the figure below, Yahoo and Google dominate all major search engine on the internet world.

*Note* The picture above taken from www.seomoz.com *Note*

Based on my experience, here are the necessary step / SEO effort that can be usefull for new blogger :

1. Choose Your Template
Not a joke, choose the best template (it depends on blogger's objectives). Some of you might be want to be adsense publisher, so choose the best templates that has good structure for placing your adsense ads. Some of templates are designed and / or already modified by SEO experts, I think it's better to choose SEO friendly templates.

2. Customize Your Templates
Editing your meta tags (usually title, description, keyword and robot) is important before submitting your blog to search engine. It can help search engines to list your sites in their indexes more faster and accurate. I already discuss about meta tags in the previous post. For further explanations about meta tags click here.
Other modifications, for example: adding social bookmark toolbar.. How? Go to addthis.com, get addthis toolbar script and implement the script on your blog.
Changing nofollow attributes to dofollow on comment section can be considered to increase your page impression -> dofollow blog can attract your reader to comment on your blog, because they'll get a free backlink.

3. Getting Indexed
Submit your site link to major search engine. Based on the picture above thus we can say it is very important to submit our site to the leading search engine (that is Google, Yahoo and MSN)
- To submit your site on google, go to : http://google.com/addurl/
- To submit your site on Yahoo, go to : https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
- To submit your site on MSN, go to :
http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSDD2
There are several free submit service to submit your site to major search engines such as MyPagerank.net
Other free submit service : http://www.submitexpress.com/
*Note* Use one of them to submit your site, after submit you can resubmit your blog at least in one month *Note*

4. Submit Your Blog to Blog Directories
Recommended directories :
http://www.technorati.com
http://www.blogexplosion.com
http://blog-indonesia.com --> for Indonesian blogger
http://www.blogcatalog.com
http://www.bloghop.com
http://www.blogarama.com/
http://www.blogdigger.com/add.jsp
http://www.blogpulse.com/submit.html
http://www.blog-directory.org/add-blog.php
http://delicious.com/ --> formerly http://www.del.icio.us/

5. Install Alexa Widget & Toolbar
Alexa is a site who give rank for all websites based on the visitors traffic from that's blog or site. This is one of the most accurate freely available tools to find out how well your site ranks up against millions of other sites on the Web.
- Install alexa widget on your blog / website
- Install alexa toolbar on your browser. Download alexa toolbar here
- Write an article about alexa traffic rank and post it in your web site. It will make your web page more SEO friendly for alexa.

6. Keep Update Your Blog
.... hmm can't say anymore just keep your blog up to date. "CONTENT IS THE KING"

7. Blogwalking & Exchange link
No doubt that blogwalking is very important to get more traffic. Don't forget to comment on every blog that you've visited. Use url input to submit your blog. Better if you comment on blog that doesn't have nofollow attribute so your blog will be indexed by Google. Exchange link and get backlink with blogs especially the blog that has a high pagerank is very important. You will get a quality backlink if your blog have a backlink from high pagerank blog and have the relevant or same topic with your blog. Get as many backlink as possible !

8. Social Bookmarking Submissions
You can use free social bookmarking service like www.socialmarker.com
Get a socialbookmarker toolbar from socialmarker.com or addthis.com
It can help you spread a link on the best social bookmarking sites, you'll get a lot of backlinks and it can help you to increase your site's traffic. Your link gets indexed by Google in a matter of minutes.

9. Create signature on forums / Mailing list
This way suitable for you whom like post on forum / mailing list. Use signature facility to promote your blog. Create brief description to explain your blog so people will interest to click your signature.

10. Ping your blog
Ping services allow you to automatically notify blog directories and search engines that your blog has been updated. There are many free ping service on the net. You can choose one to ping your blog. Here are the list of recommended ping service:
- http://mypagerank.net/service_pingservice_index
- http://pingomatic.com/
- http://www.pingoat.com/
Note : "Ping your blog only if your blog has been updated"