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After posting The Blogger's Guide To Search Engine Optimisation: The Non-Confusing Way! (Part One), Kathryn commented with an excellent point:

''I'm not sure about SEO. Not the mechanics of it, but the integrity. If you write a post and want people to find it, fine, but I think blogs really suffer when you start writing posts specifically to get search engine hits.''

I COMPLETELY agree with her! In fact, I'd actually written a paragraph conveying that very sentiment originally, mentioning that blog posts which are constantly created strategically for SEO are extremely unappealing indeed; after all, do you really want people to be suspicious of your intentions each time they visit your blog, questioning ''wait a minute - was this article written for me, or a search engine?!'' ? No!  And then I deleted it all because it just didn't fit right.

To me, SEO-driven titles should only be used occasionally and when relevant (I mean, just look at 99.9% of the ridiculous titles that I make up for my own posts - I'm hardly beckoning the search engines of the world with labels such as Um, Is This The Secretary For The ‘I Hate Pores’ Club? Cancel My Membership!); information that I include/share is only ever added if I think someone will find it useful or interesting, and never to detract from anyone's creativity or to alter their posting motives! Anyhoo. A huge thank-you to Kathryn for encouraging me to clarify this, and on to part two we roll!

Give Your Images Titles Or Descriptions

How? By adding a few descriptive words about your photograph into their 'alt text' box. (Or, as it's labelled in the above photograph, the 'alternative text' box.) This box is usually located next to where you upload your image, or where your text editing options are, and doing so is like the equivalent of waving an enormous flag at search engines which reads ''hey, my post about frogs is over here!''

Update Your Blog With Fresh Content Regularly

Daily? Oh, not necessarily. By the minute? Impossible! At least weekly? Well, this is certainly preferable, as search engines favour blogs which are updated with fresh content regularly by giving them and their posts higher rankings in search results against other blogs which aren't.

Sprinkle Your Posts With Relevant Keywords

If your post title is about dugongs and their penchant for earmuffs then it's likely that the body of your post is going to be about dugongs and their penchant for earmuffs, too, but something to keep in mind when putting together an article is that Google and his friends Yahoo and Bing love keywords relevant to your subject headings, and the more times that you mention dugongs and their penchants for earmuffs, where/if appropriate, the better!

Link Swap

Having a new blog is similar to being at a stranger's party: you don't know anyone, they don't know you, so it's unlikely that you'll be receiving a barrage of hugs and high-fives and glowing recommendations. Existing on the internet is no different; if Google, Yahoo, Bing or any other search engine doesn't recognise you, they're not going to promote your blog to the top of their search results - but there is a way of getting around this! How? By link swapping with other bloggers. Comment on other blogs, link to their blogs on your own and contact bloggers to see if they'll feature your blog in their links section in return. For the time cost of sending a simple e-mail, you could have your blog linked to by another blogger, and automatically receive a nod of approval from search engines - if other websites like you, they like you, so always stick your hand up for a link swap, or get out there and create one of your own!

♥

Okay, so now that we've discussed search engine optimisation, have a quick click through some of your posts and inspect their titles; now, SEARCH for them! If you've cooked up a piece on thrift shopping, look for articles on thrift shopping and see how/where your article ranks. Now, revise it: could you make a couple of changes to make it more search engine friendly?

xoxo

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