We all know that blogs can be great spider food for search engines because of their regularly updated content, but there are a few SEO techniques to keep in mind to give your blog the ability to reach its full SEO potential.

Keywords

Do some preliminary keyword research for each post, and use appropriate keywords in your meta tags on your blog post page. If readers come across your post about a recipe for sauteed asparagus with butter because they searched “health food,” they’re probably not going to stick around to read through your site or even to the end of your post. Using Key words that are related to the information that you’re writing about will help to improve reader interest and loyalty, decrease your bounce rate and increase the number of return users.

Use your keywords in your post content to enhance your post and help strengthen the relationship between your meta keywords and the content. Remember, keyword stuffing is a black hat SEO technique and can get your blog black listed. It may be in your best interest to stick to whitehat SEO for your blog.

Titles

Meta titles appear at top of the window when your blog is opened and on the tab. Just like meta keywords, it’s important that your title tags reflect the information in the blog. Titles are important for spider food, but they are also important for usability. The title will show up in the Search Engine Results Page and is often the first thing a user sees before deciding whether or not to read a post. If your titles aren’t appropriate to their search chances are that they will look right over it.  Cory Doctorow, who writes for BoingBoing offers the following: “Write headlines as though you are a wire service writer.”

Heading Tags

Using H1 tags appropriately is also very useful technique for search-ability. It’s a good idea to use your most relevant keywords in your H1 tags, but also to use them in front of content that is relevant.

Links

Remember to link a word in a sentence to something that is related to that word. Try writing the sentence and then deciding which word(s) to link. The sentence containing the link should sound natural and not feel like you’ve forced that sentence in to your content just so you can add that link. Linking the word “here” or the phrase “click here” is not useful to your user because it doesn’t give them any information about what they are about to click on and where they will end up when they do.

Use internal links as often as possible. When readers find a topic on your blog they are interested in they will want to read more, by linking to other blog posts in your blog you’re making it very easy for them to find that extra information and stay on your blog at the same time.

Make your external links open in a new tab or a new window. You want to give your reader more information and make them feel that they can trust your sources and your knowledge on the subject, but you don’t want them to navigate away from your site completely. Opening links in a new tab is usually easy to select in most WYSIWYG editors and blog software, but it’s not always the default option, so you have to remember to check every time you link something outside of your site.

Content

Like most things in your blog the content is just as important to usability as it is to SEO. You should have an appropriate amount of content and an appropriate use of keywords in your content. Remember that your some of your lead can end up on a search engine result page and goes hand in hand with your title in helping your user decide to read or to skip over. Make your lead clear, relevant to the keywords, and enticing enough to encourage a click.

The average number of words for blog posts can vary, but remember that you shouldn’t limit yourself to a certain number if it means sacrificing your message.

These techniques may seem to be common sense, but they are often over looked when writers sit down to their blogs. Remembering these simple tips can lay the ground work for a very SEO friendly blog post.