Blogs: Elements & Design 3

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Still talking about blogs and how to make them work for you…

We talked just a bit about SEO (search engine optimization) earlier.  To optimize your blog for the search engines, you must focus on two key points:

1)  Internally, in the blog, you MUST make heavy use of keywords.  That means deciding on your keywords using Google Adwords and then using those keywords in the blog name, posts, categories, and tags.

And

2) Externally.

Externally optimizing means two things:  Links out and links in.

The more links you have, the higher Google and the others will rank your blog.

Links out is pretty easy.  If you reference something in your blog, link to it.  So for example, if you have a reference to one of your books, link to it in the post.  If you talk about something in the news, link to the story that tells more about it.  Point to other things on the ‘net, and Google will see you as an expert rather than as a lone-wolf.

Links in is harder.  When you comment on someone else’s blog, be sure to link back to yours.  (Don’t just comment about your blog though… join their discussion!)

Write guest blogs, do interviews, and have others post reviews that link back to your blog.

For me, I cross link my blogs when I post about my books on the bottom of my blog and one of those links goes to my romance blog to the first chapter.

These are harder to get, but worth it.

Next time we’ll talk about how often to post to your blog and getting content help!