Tvmama

1 Comment Written by Atila on August 25, 2008 – 1:49 pm

If you are going to use your community as a way of generating traffic to your Web site, you should make sure that your blog and forum posts are search-engine optimized. The first thing you should do is use keyword research tools such as the Yahoo Search Suggestion Tool to explore what your audience is searching for.

You can utilize the keyword research tool to identify keywords that you want to target within your blog title, headlines, and posts. After you have identified your target keywords, you are ready to generate a blog post. You should highlight your target keywords in various ways, including adding them to headlines and using bold or italic font to make your keywords stand out. The benefit of search-engine-optimizing your blog posts is that when search engines index your Web site, you are more likely to rank for target keywords.

Writing search-engine-optimized blog posts is important if you want your content to rank well in search engines. You should familiarize yourself with how your blog software formats your content and make adjustments where necessary for search-engine-optimization purposes. Use keyword research tools such as the Yahoo Search Suggestion tool, located at http://inventory.overture.com, to explore what your audience is searching for. The idea of using a keyword research tool is to identify keywords that you want to target within your blog title, headlines, and posts.

For example, if you are writing a post about a specific kind of acne treatment, you should perform keyword research around that broad topic and select five to ten keywords to include throughout the body of the post. All the keywords you select should be related to the topic of your post.

The primary topic of your post should be included in your title tag and within any post headlines. For example, if your post is about using Proactiv Solution acne treatment, your title and any headlines should reflect just that. Your title tag would read something like “My Experiences Using Proactiv Solution.” Any headlines should mention the word Proactiv Solution such as “Using Proactiv Solution in Combination with Oil-Free Lotion.” When linking to your blog post from other posts within your Web site, you should use keyword-rich anchor text.

For example, if you just created a new post about the best types of soap to use on your face to prevent acne, you may want to link back to your acne treatment post with the anchor text “Proactiv Solution.” In general, you should selectively use bold or italic type to note your target keywords from the rest of the text. However, keep in mind that your post should ultimately be seen as natural to your readers and to the search engines. Do not just simply stuff keywords where they do not belong. Instead, write keyword-rich posts and make sure to highlight your most important keywords.

One of the primary goals of writing blog posts should be to generate content that is so interesting or useful that other Web sites link to you. The more Web sites that link to your blog, the more likely that your Web site ranks well in the search engines. One way to generate a lot of links back to your blog is through a strategy called link baiting. Link baiting is when you specifically construct a post by using creative and sometimes radical hooks. A hook is a type of plot device typically used in screenwriting and literature to quickly capture the attention of the reader. The most common kinds of hooks include informational, news, humor, evil or malicious, and tool hooks. Informational hooks provide information that a reader may find very useful. For example, you may choose to write a post titled “How to Rank Within the Top 10 Search Results on Google.” News hooks are typically used as news is spreading.

For example, you may have chosen to write a post moments after the CEO of Apple commented on CNBC that iPhone sales were better than expected. Humor hooks tell a funny story or joke, and evil or malicious hooks focus on saying something unpopular or mean. Tool hooks are used when you provide some sort of tool that is useful enough that your readers link to it. For example, Jim Boykin, a well-respected search-engine marketing expert, provides free keyword generation and analytical tools on his Web site, WeBuildPages.com, to entice others to link back to his site as a resource.