SEO for blogs - Basic Blog Search Engine Optimization

There are a million search engine optimization blogs out there and most of them have shared one or more posts about Blog search engine optimization. I’ve steered clear of the subject until now because I feel it’s been done to death.

Then again, a client just showed us their brand spanking new blog and they want to know why it isn’t appearing in blog search.

And yesterday someone tried to get my attention on a rather unremarkable blog that demonstrates his pathetic failure to grasp fundamental search engine optimization principles because it doesn’t even appear in blog search.

Here are the rules for blog search engine optimization that I implement. Those of you who don’t understand what the problem is with Google’s Supplemental Results pages need not concern yourself with basic, common sense SEO here. These tips are just for people who wonder what I think is important in blog search engine optimization.

1. Use blogging software that has built-in pinging capabilities
2. Use blogging software that creates individual post archives
3. Use blogging software that doesn’t rely on third-party service logins for comments
4. Use blogging software that allows you to create additional pages on your site without requiring special modules and plug-ins
5. Use blogging software that creates keyword-rich URLs for your individual blog posts
6. Use the raw mode, hard-coding, hand-edit mode, non-WYSIWIG interface for keying in your posts so that you know exactly what HTML code is being embedded in your text-rich blog posts
7. Blog with text, not with pictures
8. Blog with paragraphs, not bullet points
9. Blog with useful, meaningful information OR highly passionate opinions
10. Blog early, blog often, and blog consistently
11. Be attentive and responsive to your readers’ requests but don’t let them design the blog for you
12. Check your facts BEFORE you share them on your blog
13. Find something to say that you haven’t read on a blog in the last three days, unless you’re directly rebutting (or indirectly rebutting) another blogger’s post
14. Check your settings at least once a month so you don’t forget how your blog is set up or how to admin it

I could write a million other suggestions. The problem is that many other people have written a million other suggestions, so why do so many blogs suck at search visibility? If you want me to find your insults and inexpert musings on search engine optimization, you should at least have enough of a fundamental grasp on the topic so that when I Google my name I can find your inarticulate rantings that show you can’t read beyond the fourth-grade level.

People who rely on social media sites to promote their blogs have no business writing about search engine optimization unless their blogs show up in at least one of the major blog search services (note: call that the RAND FISHKIN RULE — I can find SEOmoz in blog search and Rand didn’t need my help to do that).

If you can’t get even Google’s Blogsearch to mention your blog, you don’t know jack about search engine optimization much less have the ability to distinguish between which pages are worth indexing and which pages should be ignored.

I’m sorry — I was talking about SEO for blogging, not blogging for SEO (that doesn’t work).

The bottom line here is that if you want visibility for your blog you don’t have to create a thousand accounts on DIGG or other social media sites in order to be seen. Blog search is easier to get into than any other search vertical. The spammers know this. The kids who write about their homework and personal dramas know this. The science fiction and fantasy fans know this.

I don’t expect every business to know it but, DAMN, if you’re passing yourself off as an SEO you should at least prove on the Web that you can be found for SOMETHING.

Autopinging is what sets blogging off from every other form of Web content development. You post something and your blog puts you into the blog search indexes. You don’t have to do anything but type and hit PUBLISH.

If you’re involved in search engine optimization and you use blogs, in my humble opinion as a self-proclaimed SEO expert, you need to prove you can get a blog indexed in such a way that it’s actually VISIBLE in blog search.

That way, when a customer brings you their blog and says, “We cannot find it in blog searches any where,” you may be qualified to do some trouble shooting and figure out that the blog is not set up to ping.

REAL search engine optimizers focus on building visibility. Fake SEOs just try to ride the coat-tails of self-proclaimed experts like me.