For a writer looking to build an effective web platform the blog is an essential tool. It represents the centre of a writer’s ‘web’ and is the place to which fans and followers are funnelled. However, the days are long gone when a writer could build a large following by simply launching a blog, telling a few friends and blogging every couple of days. As the blogsphere has grown in recent years competition for readers has intensified and it is now more important than ever that writers look to maximise the visibility of their blog.
Content is king
Much of this blog post will be looking at the way Google ranks sites and how you can use this understanding to drive visitors to your blog. Yet, no matter what is written about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) one thing remains true – Google likes great content.
More precisely Google likes content that other important (in Google’s eyes) sites link to. Therefore the quickest and easiest way to boost your Google rating and send gallons of Google juice in your direction is to write great content that other people will link to on their blog. A simple link on a high traffic site can send your Google ranking through the roof.
Link baiting
This brings us to link baiting. In it’s simplest form link baiting is writing blog posts that will generate a lot of interest (i.e. links). A example would be something like ‘Read this post and I guarantee your book will be published’ or ’5 ways writers are like ninjas’ or this recent post I wrote 7 essential websites for writers looking to improve their online presence. There are loads of articles about link baiting out there but I would suggest this post by Jim Westergren will get you started. I would also suggest you read Matt Cutt’s blog.
Key Words
One thing Google looks for when ranking your site is the frequency and context of key words and phrases. After all it will be looking to match your site with user search queries so it is important that you take as much control of this process as possible. In essence this means you will be looking to pick a handful of words and phrases and optimise your blog for these. Now this is not an exact science and Google is sensitive to people just listing key words and other ‘black’ tricks. The best approach is to simply weave the words into the text. The earlier you can mention them the better. Another good practice is to include key words in both the title of your post, any sub-headers and (if possible) any links. Here is a good article about the basics of key words and this is a more advanced article about SEO and key words. I would strongly suggest you play with Google key word suggestion tool to get a feel for the words and phrases that you might use.
Blogging platform
If you are serious about optimising your blog for Google then you need to think carefully about the platform you are using. Once again this is a bit of a black art but (surprisingly) the worst place for your blog, in regards to SEO, seems to be Blogger. To be truly effective you are going to need to get access to some of the ‘under the hood’ stuff. I could write a whole blog post on the options open to bloggers but the long and short of it it is that WordPress is the best choice. If using WordPress with ideally the Thesis theme or at least the All in One SEO Pack plugin, than you will see a jump in you visitors. These contain options that allow writers to define the <title> tag (which is Google-juice-tastic), whilst also adding other meta data such as keywords and description. The result is that each new post becomes a new page for Google to rank and a source of precious Google juice.
In conclusion it is important for writers to think beyond the basic writing of a blog post if they are to maximise their Google ranking and drive traffic to their blog.
