Tuesday, November 2

A Newbie Guide to Search Engine Optimisation

Disclaimer: I am not an expert on this topic.

Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO is the process of improving the ranking of your webpage on the Search Engine.

SEO is generally quite intuitive, if what you are writing is relevant to a subject, there is a higher chance that it will be ranked higher on the search engine results of the subject. It's logical, because a search engine that returns the most relevant results is deemed as a "Good search engine", so Google and other search engines will want to tweak their search engine algorithms to find the "best" results.

Having said this, please don't go about extensively spamming the same few words in your blog (you know what I mean if you stumble upon porn sites - they abuse all sorts of variation of the same word). Search engines generally blacklist these sites and prevent them from appearing in search listings.

For casual bloggers like us who wants to increase traffic via search engine, here's a small thing you can begin with.

Your blog has 2 unique IDs, your name and your blog's name. Should past visitors want to visit your site but forget the name, they might type the any of them in the search engine. In my case, typing "Shingo T" and "Cup of Ice" currently brings my webpage as the first entry in Google's search page. If you are using names like "John" and "John's homepage", chances are that it will be tough for people to find your website.

But of course, most people out there do not know who the hell "Shingo T" and "Cup of Ice" is, so they won't even bother searching using these key words. That's why if your blogging revolves around something specific (eg. fashion or dog grooming), have that word used as a title on your blog.

For instance, someone may name her site "Globetrotter - Addiction of a Travelholic". One look at the title and you know what the blog is about. So chances are that this will attract someone looking for travel blogs, rather than someone looking to recover from nicotine addiction.

For those who are more technically savvy on webpages, you can read this free document from Google on SEO - Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide!

And finally, never let traffic take the fun out of your blogging! ^_^

9 comments:

Ice said...

I hardly care about how many hits I get. Some may think it's important. Do you?

Twilight Man said...

So does "TWILIGHT ZONE" generate many hits?
Next post, teach us how to earn $$ from Nuffnang! That Adsense has banned so many innocent bloggers.

khengsiong said...

Downloaded the guide. It's 32 pages long. Will take a while to read.

BTW, I think the number one rule to increase traffic is still to have great contents.

Shingo T said...

Ai Shiang:
I think more hits are a good to have. If more traffic increases the comments I get (and I love reading comments), I will go for it. Of course, not forgetting the little Ad revenues.

Twilight:
What does "Twilight Zone" mean to the average person? Haha, Aliens and supernatural stuffs come to my mind. ^_^

Khengsiong:
I agree with you to some extent - We need great contents for our sites. Having a lousy site listed high on the search engine will not get us recurrent traffic.

Eventually, we need visibility to synergise with great content, unless we just want a small comfortable community of readers.

As someone once said to me, "You can have a great product, but if you don't know how to market it, you won't make money."

Netster23 said...

I need to change my blog name after reading :)

In fact I have change it so very frequently I just retain "netster"and it's a tiresome work. Every time I change it I see how it ranked hahahahahah but now I don't care about it any more... because any good topic will brings visitor just make sure your blog is already listed on Google.

If your site is not listed on Google chances are... no one will even know your site exist.

awesome post Bro!

HappySurfer said...

Traffic is important if blog is monetized or if blogger is selling a product or products. Content may be king but keywords are important to generate organic traffic or if you want your blog or product to be found when people do a search. A high PR is also essential otherwise blog won't even get a drop of traffic.

Great sharing, Shingo.

Lily Riani said...

ahahahha.... i was about to say, hey that blog have the same name as mine. hahahah..... i dont care until recent when i discover other tab. it took me 1.5 yrs to realise, but i dont do anything abt it though.

Anonymous said...

Incidentally, one of my blog pics had a "pornographic" name, so a lot of foreigners will end up on my blog everytime they key a certain "pornogprahic" term on a search engine.

There u go =)

Shingo T said...

boh.tak.chek.:
Sex sells, isn't it? You never go wrong with it.

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