Blogging has become a very huge money-making industry for lots of people. In fact, as of 2011, there were 164 million blogs created. That means of these 164 million blogs, most of them have advertising on them with most of the blog owners hoping to make some extra cash, or, expanding their already established business. Also, about 27% of all bloggers are full-time blogging professionals, with 5% of blogs being focused on business. That is quite a bit of competition, but don't worry! There are optimization tips below that can help you beat the crowd.
If you're looking to reach a bigger audience with your business blogging or maybe even make a nice side income, there are some rules to optimization that should be followed for the best results. You probably already know the basics of SEO, keywords, and analytics, so we'll jump into the other stuff that you might not have thought about to optimize blog ranking and see a rise in readership.
Catchy titles, sizzling content
Who said blogging was an easy gig? Most times, it means consistent catchy content that people want to read and share, which means having both optimized content and headlines. Don't forget to put keywords in headlines but also keep them enticing. Instead of simply putting "A list of SEO tactics" as your header, give it some pizazz with a headline like "10 Sure-Fire SEO Tricks!" Viewers are normally more receptive with lists and informational content.
Don't forget the multimedia content
Most bloggers forget that the written word can be complimented with other sorts of media on the Internet, and it is normally preferred by people. One of the biggest happens to be video, which can be optimized to help you rank better. In fact, it is projected that video marketing might just trump video SEO in the near future. To jazz up those posts of written content, add in video from your YouTube account or relevant videos that you have found.
Images are another huge way to optimize blogs. Adding an image that has proper SEO in its title will help any posting reach a higher rank, and multiple images is even better! Of course, you have to make sure you aren't over-optimizing your content with keyword stuffing and black hat SEO tactics.
Make sure your blog is mobile optimized
As technology furthers mobile devices, the statistics of people browsing the Internet on their devices is only going to rise. And with so many devices out there, it can seem almost impossible to optimize your blog for every single one and still maintain a great blog. In reality, it can be pretty easy. To optimize blogs for mobile users, all you have to remember is this: keep it simple.
Screens are obviously smaller on a mobile device, whether it's a smartphone or tablet, so don't overdo it on the fancy programming. If you use a Flash heavy blog, then you're blocking out a huge segment of readers who use Apple devices (HTML5 is a great alternative), for example. Also, a mobile device doesn't have the processing power for websites with a lot of buttons and advertisements. Clean and simple is the best bet.
Keep away from the bad backlinks
One way to boost your blog's subscribers and ranking is to have backlinks, which has been a common optimization practice for quite a while. However, it hasn't been until recently when Google rolled out Google Penguin that bloggers have to think twice before adding that backlink. You see, most websites and blogs were backlinking to any and every link they could possibly find, which meant a lot of bad links and low quality content. Google wants to give bad content the boot and penalizes blogs that use low quality backlinking services and haven't updated their backlinks to only include higher quality links. Don't be one of those blogs!
Keeping an optimized blog doesn't mean having to use shadier SEO and optimization tactics. You can still see lots of improvement and impressive ROI by following the rules! Hopefully this concise guide can help you boost your blog and business.
Speaking of, have you used any of these tactics before? Are any of these optimization tips new to you? Tell us about your optimizing experiences.
