In this day of age everyone loves blogs and yes that includes Google. Well as you will learn if you have not already when Google loves something you have no choice but to embrace it and start having some feelings for it to. The following article explains why blogs are a search engine optimizers best friend and why they should soon (if they are not already) be a big part of your business’ online strategy, if you want to increase your traffic and sales.

Blogs make it easier for search engines to understand their content which makes it much easier for you to impress the search engines and start ranking on the first page for your main keywords. Almost all blogging software organizes posts and data through categories which allows you to organize your content in specific themes. The bottom line is blog architecture and effective category usage make your target key words and phrases very easy for search engines to find, index and rank. To understand how this works you need to understand how blogs work in comparison to your traditional website.

Let’s say you post a article on your traditional website about how great your product is. This article is posted on one single page with maybe one or two links from your homepage or interior pages to it. This means you give the search engines only one or two chances of finding and indexing your article.
Now you post that same article to your blog. The blog software posts the article to your main blog page in a long list normally sorted by date of all your recent blog posts. The article is given its own specific page within the blog and if you assign the article to a category the article is again posted on that specific categories page. So for one posting you just got three different pages on your blog with your article on it and keyword rich interior links throughout your blog that link to the article. For even more exposure assign your article to more then one relevant category and get even more links and pages on your blog with your article on it.

Search engines love keyword rich links that take you to content rich articles that focus on your key word phrases. To get all the exposure and keyword rich links a blog gives you for just one single article post would take you forever on a traditional website.

Blog posts also can easily be placed into RSS feeds automatically with no additional effort from the blog webmaster. When this happens other people online and even other blogs can subscribe to get updates every time you make a new entry into your blog. When your RSS feeds are syndicated like this embedded links back to your blog and article are included. This means even more links are created and posted on other websites around the Internet that link back to your blog. Now with just one post you created a number of keyword rich internal links followed up by many (possibly 100’s) of keyword rich external links. If your RSS feed is submitted to a blog or RSS directory you can even benefit more by being indexed in blog or RSS search engines where other competing business’ are not listed because they do not have a blog or RSS feed.

Blogs are not something that you can create then let sit. You must constantly maintain and update your blog with fresh content and posts or else you will quickly loose RSS feed subscribers and erase all the SEO benefits you created when you first started your blog. These updates do take time but they make Google and other search engines like you even better. Fresh updated content means that search engines will constantly be crawling your website with their spiders and keep indexing more and more pages of your blog. Compared to a static website that does not get updated very often you will have a huge advantage in getting ranked for your dream keywords in Google. The more pages that Google has indexed for your site the more relevant your site becomes and the more authority each one of your posts has in ranking over a competitor for a specific key word or phrase. Plus your blog will force you to stay on top of your business and keep it fresh and up to date with new ideas and new energy.

So I hope at this point you understand the huge SEO benefits of having a blog associated to your business and website. Tons of keyword rich internal and external links and constant crawling and monitoring by the search engines. Well guess what? Blogs even have more benefits then this.

Blogs with active readers who comment on articles and posts are like mini online communities. These users link back to their favorite blogs in online profiles and constantly interact with the blog. Now you do not have to do all the work yourself because you just got a team of people to go out and start giving you even more links and more references to your business all over the Internet. In this day of age blogs are a invaluable asset to your online marketing and SEO strategies and should not be ignored.
So what does this mean for you and your business?

• Start a blog
• Make keyword rich and content relevant categories that are displayed on the main page of your blog
• Make sure you update your blog regularly with content that is GOOD. No one likes to read boring content
• Start a RSS feed of your blogs content
• Submit your blog and RSS feed to all the directories that you can
• Link to your blog from your main website
• Promote your blog as a community for your current customers and future customers to find out whats going on with your business on a regular basis.
• Watch your Google rankings for your dream key words and phrases shoot up and your web traffic increase

Well blogs can be fun but they are a lot of work. You MUST stay on top of them with regular updates which can be a pain sometimes but the benefits you gain for your website and business are so so valuable. If you get tired of updating your blog all the time and have nothing fresh and new to say to your customers then maybe you should rethink your business? Blogs can benefit all types of business’ from a retail stores to a information site. No business in my opinion is dedicated enough to their online marketing efforts if they have not created a blog to go along with there website.

Google is always changing and editing its algorithm but you can not worry about that. They pay 1000’s of people to perfect Internet search, so let them do their job and we will do ours. As web publishers and Internet retailers we just have to try and stay ahead of the curve and make sure that our pages and websites keep getting found among the billions of pages on Google. This is one part of a series of articles I will be publishing on forcing Google to show you and your website some love.

Title tags with your keywords in them- Now title tags used to be more important then they are today but there is no doubt that title tags play a huge factor in how Google sees your site. Google displays your title tag as your title in each search listing on their site. Every single page of your blog, website or store should have title tags. DON’T BE LAZY MAKE TITLE TAGS. Some important factors when creating your title tags are as follows.

• Make sure your title tags are not stuffed with keywords. Key word stuffing used to be the craze back in the day but today it will just hurt your online image as far as Google is concerned. A good title tag can do wonders for your search engine rank in Google but a bad title tag can make Google ignore you. Don’t piss off the boss (Google is our boss in the SEO world weather we like it or not) and make sure your title tags are a good representation of your business with key words carefully placed throughout.

• Below is a screen shot of a Google search for Gold Watches. This image shows you what happens when your title tag gets to be to long. You can see the trailing dots after the second listing. I do not recommend title tags that are this long since Google will cut it off and I believe you will have a higher click through rate when your entire title tag is visible in the search listings. Keep your title tags to 65 characters including spaces.

• Use dividers in your title tags to separate your brand name and key words from each other.  The “|” symbol called the pipe bar is a popular divider as well as the arrow “>” and the hyphen “-”. You can see both the pipe and the hyphen symbol effectively used in the “gold watches” search above.  When using your brand name in the title tag make sure it is separated from your title description or key words with a divider. This is shown above with GoldWatches.com being separated with the “-” from there product descriptions.

• Remember your search audience when creating title tags. Your goal with a title tag is not just to make Google happy and get you listed for your target key words but also to attract users to click on your listing once you get listed. You should have different types of title tags for main index pages, research pages, product description pages etc. For example a main index page that links to your primary website will have a more general title tag. Pages that focus on research articles will need a bit more detailed title that describes the topic and name of the article. If you are selling a product on your page make sure to include terms like “buy XM radios here”, “purchase Movado diamond watches cheap”, “download .99 cent songs from Usher” etc in your title tags.  In this day of SEO you really need to approach titles as copy first keywords second and I think you will be amazed at some of the results and conversions you will get.  Think about if you had a title that pulled in 1000 visitors and only 1 bought something from you because the title was misleading and not descriptive enough or a title that pulled din 50 visitors and 10 bought something. Which would you rather have?

• If your title tag just can not fit everything you need to describe your page maybe you need to create a new page. Making many pages that focus on more focuses content will not only help you in creating more efficient title tags but it will give you more chances of the search engines indexing you for more key words. So if you get to the point where you just can not fit everything you want in your title tag don’t worry, just create more pages with more specific content on each page.

• DONT USE THE SAME TITLE TAG ON ALL OF YOUR PAGES. I will not go into detail about this just don’t do it.

• Keyword proximity is very important in title tags as well as the rest of your website. I feel that keyword proximity is one of the most forgotten and important factors in how Google decides what key words you will be indexed for. Keyword proximity refers to how close your keywords are to each other. Search engines like Google ignore many words referred to as “stop words”. Some stop words are “the”, “and”, “or” etc. Using these words between your main key words is simply breaking the keywords importance. Never break your most important keywords up with stop words. It is important to keep your key phrases as close to each as possible without using “stop words” between them. When properly used keyword proximity can give higher positions in Google results as keyword proximity in the title tag is considered to be one of the most important factors of determining Google search positions.

• Learn from your key word competitors and see what title tags are working for them. There is nothing wrong in the search engine optimization world with taking what your competitor does and trying to one up them. Look at there key word proximity, number of key words in title tag, title length, dividers etc and come up with your own formula to try and move on up the ladder.

If you remember these lessons you should have no problem creating effective title tags that not only make Google happy but attract your dream customers into your website from the Google search listings.

I am interested to see what has worked or not worked for you in the past as far as title tags and SEO is concerned so please feel free to leave comments, thoughts, questions or ideas.

CC Travis

Get Found Inc.

http://GetFoundInc.com