SEO Tips: 10 Useful Tips For Websites / Blogs

I’ve been using the free version of Web CEO this evening and even in the free version I’ve picked up a lot of useful tips to help with my Search Engine Optimisation. Here are 10 things that I’ve learnt so far:

1. Don’t use stop words like “and” “on” “a” “the” “about” “are” “that” “were” “by” “of” as search engines don’t take these auxillary words into consideration. By using a stop word in your Title tag, you potentially damage your rankings.
2. Keep the max number of words on a page under 1320. Analysis has shown that the top sites have no more than this per page. My page had 4495 words so I’m going back to posting just extracts on the homepage.
3. Put your keywords in bold as this tells the search engines these words are important.
4. Put your keywords in your titles as this tells the search engines these words are important.
5. Display your keywords at the end of the page. I’ve cheated here a bit and added a new nav at the bottom of all my pages that has my keywords as searches.
6. Use H1 tags for your titles as Search Engines pick these up. The blogware template doesn’t use these tags as standard so it took me a while to work out how to add them without my title font getting out of control, but I managed it.
7. Put your Keywords in your Alt image tags. Click here to learn why. All the images within my template now do this and I will try and add tags into any images I manually add from now on.
8. Keep your page size under 100Kb. Google only stores this as a maxiumum in its cache so any bigger and some of your content will get missed (Yahoo’s max is 500Kb)
9. Watch your colours. If your text is similar in colour to your backgrounds some search engine will consider this spam
10. Keyword Weight. Keywords must appear at in at least 1% of the words on the page.

Essential Reading: SEO & Adsense Optimisation Tips From Google

Finally some SEO advice that can be validated. There are so many ‘experts’ on the subject of SEO that I’m never sure if changes I’ve made are having a positive or negative effect on my rankings.

Well, these tips are definitely bankers as they came out in an interview Matt Cutts, a senior Google engineer did with Performancing.

The tips he gave on how to optimise traffic are all very useful:

• Take the time to read Google’s webmaster guidelines
• Don’t bother with year/month/day in blog urls; Just use the first few words from the title of the post in the url
• Don’t try to rank for a huge phrase at first - pick a smaller niche and get to be known as an expert there, and then build your way out and up
• Controversial posts are sure to build links, but too many controversial posts may undermine your credibility.
• Commenting on other blogs isn’t that useful. There are a lot of ways to build a reputation, from having a great blog to producing a unique service to speaking at conferences.
• A single creative idea that catches fire in the blogosphere or digg.com is probably more useful than just chasing/buying/trading links.
• Original information or research is great bait to attract links

The additional tip I appreciated the most was the tip on how to improve Adsense targetting through Section targetting.

Section targeting allows you to suggest sections of your text and HTML content that you’d like Google to emphasise or downplay when matching ads to your site’s content.

The HTML tags to emphasise a page section take the following format:

I’ve implemented these tags around the article section in my HTML so hopefully once my pages are re-indexed my targetting will improve, which should improve my CTR.

Thanks Matt!

Guide To Meta Tag Search Engine Optimisation

A current thread in the forum made me kick myself this evening for forgetting one of the basic principles of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), using Meta Tags, and I’ve just spent 30 minutes getting my Meta Tags optimised for SEO. Below are the steps I took to Optimise my Meta Tags For Search Engines.

The Wordpress codex explains the value of Meta Tags very clearly:

As a search engine prowls your site, it gathers information from the title, headings, content, and Meta Tags such as description or keywords. It compares the words within each of these sections and “ranks” the site dependent upon how well the information matches.

I first had SEO optimisation explained to me back in 2000, and although some of the weightings have changed since then, the basic principles remain the same. The more times a given keyword appears (in the following order) in your site url, Title, Meta Description and Meta Keywords then the higher your page score will be.

Based on this, it is clear that if your Meta Tags are optimised then this can help with search rankings. Tidying your Meta Tags will also help search engines present your results in a user friendly way, which will increase the changes that a user will click on your link rather than a competing link.

Step 1: Install Optimal Title Plugin To Optimise Meta Title Tag

The default structure for Titles within Wordpress displays the site name first, and then the post title. This is no good as a search engine will often truncate this so that it fits into their display format. If you have a long site name then all a user sees is your site title, rather than your article title which should more closely mirror what they are searching for, and increase your chances of being clicked.

To fix this install the Optimal Title Plugin which places the article title before the blog name in the page title, providing more meaningful search engine results (and also browser bookmark names).

Click here to install the plugin and for the installation instructions.

Step 2: Use The Excerpt_Reloaded Plugin To Optimise Meta Description Tag Length And Text

Why are Meta Description Tags Important?

The meta description tag describes your site’s content, giving search engines’ spiders an accurate summary filled with multiple keywords. The meta description tag is especially important because it’s the only tag supported by some engines. Another reason the meta description tag is important is that some engines use it as a site’s summary on their results pages. If they do, the reader may actually see this hidden tag.

I decided to use The Excerpt_Reloaded Plugin To Generate my Meta Description Tag, as I try to make sure that the first sentence on all of my posts reflects what the post is about, or at least contain a ‘hook’ to make readers read the whole post.

The general consensus is that a Meta Description should be under 200-250 characters so I created my Meta Description by adding the following code to my header (after the <>):

What this code does is add a 35 word excerpt if the page in question is a single page, removes all the HTML tags and adds a nice ‘more…’ at the end regardless of the length. I chose 35 words as this should keep me under 200 words, which is considered the maximum recommended length for the Meta Description. If the page being displayed is a multi-post view, then the blog name and description are displayed.

Download The Excerpt_Reloaded plugin here.
Step 3: Use The Ultimate Tag Warrior Plugin To Create Meta Keywords

I got a lucky break here. I already use the Ultimate Tag Warrior Plugin to create tags for search engines like Technorati, as well to help users find related posts. Hidden away on the UTW options page was a option to use the tags I’d already created as Meta Keyword Tags. This was such a great result, as it means that all of my posts now have optimised Meta Keywords as I always add UTW tags whenever I write an article.
More: Ultimate Tag Warrior Plugin

Optional Step 4: Add Other Meta Information

Although not essential, this can help some search engines and directories categorise your content. This site has a good list of tags that you can use and also this one on which tags to use. I decided to add the following:

I hope you found this guide useful. Please leave a comment if you have any questions or any other tips.

Google Ranking Factors - The Top 100

Steve Rubel had tracked down a list of the top 100 factors that affect page ranks. Some of these are blatantly obvious like having your keywords in your domain name and meta tags, but other less obvious ones like putting your keywords in bold and the font size of keywords.

Worth checking out as we all forgot the rules in the heat (haste!) of writing new posts!

Top 100 SEO factors

Statcounter v/s Google Analytics : Statcounter Increases Log File

Well, another improvement in the fight between Google Analytics & Statcounter.

Statcounter had sent a mail and posted on their new blog a message to all members that from now on the log file with all the statistics will be 500 pageloads instead of 100 pageloads that were the standard free deal until today.

I worked fine with the 100, but it’s always nice to get another freebee.

To switch to 500 pageloads simply click on the wranch image near you project name & choose Adjust log file - Change to 500 and you’re ready to go.

BackLink Watch : Check Your Site's Backlinks

From the home of DigPageRank.com - Backlinkwatch.com brings a very simple and very useful back link check tool.

Backlink watch homepage shows a few ads and a “Enter URL” field. as simple as that.

Once a url is entered you will be directed to a page that will show you all the links in 1 table that will include each links anchor text, Google PR of the page, Number of OBL from that page and any special flag in that link (such as nofollow) - which is a feature most back link checkers and link popularity tools do not bother checking.

Very nice tool, very simple, only thing that annoys is that on many pages it does not recognise the anchor text and if it does not recognise that, it does not write PR, OBL or Flags.

1 more thing if you’re working with IE load the page and continue what you were doing, because it will take a long time if you have more than 1000 IBL.

DigPageRank - PR Update Checker

One of the fastest growing websites, as far as popularity within the SEO community, this Website is not so old.

Started only at October 2006 with the sole target of showing websites PR (PageRank) in all known Google DataCenters.

Powered by ads (2 banner - 1 just added this week and many text links sold through DigitalPoint Link Sale forum, this site had gained even more popularity during this (August 2007) PageRank update, when the TBPR(Tool Bar Page Rank) Update is late to come.

The owner of this website has also the www.backlinkwatch.com we’ve discussed earlier and he seems to understand that simple tools are a crowd pleasers and he is sticking with it.

Looking forward to his next SEO Tool.

Predict Your Site's Future Search Engine Ranking

Once it was one of the most popular tools to check if a PR update is occuring, but now after adding a feature that forces you to click through 3 pages and verify image until you finished browsing all 36 datacenters they present - In my opinion it’s a waste of time.

SEO Chat are good at creating great seo tools and even their forum was once of my favorites - but 1 by 1 they rouine everything with all their security and fear of loosing PR.

My vote here is to go visit DigPageRank.com

If you’re still interested this is the link - www.seochat.com/seo-tools/future-pagerank

Keywords Selection Tool For Your Website

The foundation of a good search engine optimization campagin is selecting the best keywords that your potential viewers will use to find your website. If you select keywords which won't bring targeted traffic to your site or if you select keywords which no one searches for, all the time and effort that you spend on optimizing your web site for the search engines will be wasted. For your target audience to find your site on the search engines, your page must contain keywords that match those that your targeted audience is typing into the search queries. Here I'm going to recommend 2 very useful free websites that will help refine your keyword list. These 2 websites are http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ and https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. Enter one of your keywords into the search box and it will generate a list of popular search terms related to your keywords. Look through the list and refine your keywords accordingly.

Bold or Italic Your Keywords To Increase Your Website Ranking

As mentioned previously, search engine optimization is about optimizing your webpage for certain keywords that you would like to position at. Besides increasing the keywords density of the page, bolding or italicizing the keywords does help in your search engine optimization effort. This is because the indexer, which is one of the components of a search engine, actually rips apart a page into various components and analyze them. These include the title, heading, bold, italic and other style portions of a page. When you bold or italic a word, the indexer will interpret this word as of higher importance and relevance than other words in the same paragraph or statement, thus helping your search engine optimization effort.

Add Your Website / Blog To Technorati

Previously, I discussed about how to submit your webpages to directories and social bookmarking sites as a search engine optimization technique. Continuing from there, I would like to recommend Technorati, a very popular site that offers both blog directory submission and social bookmarking services. The reason why I recommend Technorati is because unlike most blog directory, it approves your blog submission immediately and doesn't require any link back to them.

Add your Site To Social Bookmarking Sites

Social bookmarking is a way for internet users to store, classify, share and search Internet bookmarks. From a search engine optimization perspective, social bookmarking represents ample opportunities for your websites to get noticed. Simply submit yours posts to social bookmarking sites such as Digg and del.icio.us and users on these social bookmarking sites might find your posts. If your posts do get popular through this method, usually the traffic doesn’t last long. However, in the process you just might be able to retain some extra new readers. Remember don't spam social bookmarking sites for the sake of gaining traffic.

Importance of Directory Submissions : Improve Your Website Ranking

To increase visibility online is the core of every online business marketing strategy. Driving traffic to your website and getting noticed by search engines takes a lot of time and effort.

‘Links’ play a major role in determining your ranking position on the various search engines. Obtaining inbound links or back links in quantity and quality can influence your search engine rank immensely. One simple way to obtain back links is to submit your link to directories. Online directories exist for the sole purpose of providing links to web users to various sites categorized under relevant topics. “Directory submission” is a website optimization strategy that no website owner should ignore.

Directories catalog links for easy access to users. Much earlier, directories were the primary source for web users to find websites on various topics. Today search engines have taken over but directories have not lost their importance yet. You cannot obviously expect too much traffic from a directory submission. But you can expect an improvement in your search engine placement.

Here is how it works. When submitting to a directory, the major hindrance as well as the major benefit lies in the human editor. Your submission will be viewed by an actual person who determines how relevant and unique your website is. After passing his scrutiny and editing, your website will be accepted in the directory. This automatically establishes the credibility of your website; hence search engines will consider links submitted to directories.

Some directories even feed their databases to other directories and search engines. Search engines base a certain factor on directories in judging a website’s popularity and relevance. Depending on the quality of the directory and the number of back links your website has, search engines will be able to determine your relevance and qualify your website accordingly.

Note how important listing in a directory is. If your website is low on content but rich in images, flash content, etc. search engines may not be able to categorize your website when the search spider visits your site. By submitting to a directory under a particular category, you allow the search engine to categorize your site under a relevant topic.

There are general and specific directories available online. Specific directories target only those websites based on a particular subject or field. No matter what your business is, odds are that directories will be available that cater specifically to it. There are also regional directories available which may be highly useful if your online business targets a local audience.

One very famous free directory that you must submit to is the Open Directory. Getting your site an optimum listing in the Open Directory is of vital importance because Google gives a lot of importance to sites being listed in the Open Directory.

Ping Your Sites On Search Engines

After updating your website, you will need to let the search engines know by pinging them so that they will trigger their robots to come visit your blog. Fortunately, you don't need to know the technical aspect of pinging as there are free pinging services out there that help you to do this. Personally, I recommend Pingomatic for free pinging service.

Use Javascript wisely To Make Your Site Search Engine Friendly

Sites without JavaScript in the design will usually rank better than sites with JavaScript. This is because some scripts prevent the search engines spider from indexing the text on a web page. Use JavaScript wisely. My advice is that only use JavaScript if it adds value to the readers.

Submit You Site To All Major And Minor Search Engines

The most important part of getting more and more visitors to your site is to submit it to all major and minor search engines and make it more search engine compatible and friendly.

Now the question arises that how do we submit our sites to so many search engines....but there is no need to worry about that as there are many sites which submit our site to many search engines and that also totally FREE of cost. TO submit your site Click on the link below :-

To submit your site to All Major search engines click here and here

To submit your site to All Minor search engines click here

Also note: For maintaining a good rank among search engines, resubmit your site after every 30-40 days.

Submit You Site Feed / Sitemap To Google

By adding a Google sitemap to your blog, you can more easily submit your site to the Google search engine spider. You get better coverage by the spider, than by simply submitting your blog to the Google search engine. You'll also get detailed statistics about how Google sends traffic your way, and how the Google spider sees your blog.

1. If you don't have a Google account yet, you'll need one. GMail is free, and Google Groups is a vital resource for problem research. Anytime there is a problem with your blog, you should be posting into Google - Blogger Help.


2. Sign in to your Google account.


3. Go to Google Sitemaps My sites.


4. In the Add Site box, enter the URL to your blog, and hit OK.


5. You will get a message:
   

   Your site has been added to your account. Verify your ownership to view detailed statistics and errors for it.



6. Click the link for "Verify" under "Site Verified?".


7. This will take you to Verify site ownership.


8. In the Choose verification method... pull down list, select Add a META tag.


9. This will generate your site verification META tag. Highlight and Copy the text from the box.


10. In a separate window, edit the template for your blog. Paste into the template, in the heading section, as in this example:
    Here you might want to note the different ways to format a meta tag.


11. Save Template Changes, then Republish.


12. Go back to Verify site ownership, check I've added the META tag in the home page..., and hit Verify.


13. This will take you to Summary. Part of the display will include:
    

    Potential indexing problems:
    
    Some of your pages are partially indexed. [?]
    
    We do not know about all the pages of your site. Submit a Sitemap to tell us more about your site.

    
    Select the link Submit a Sitemap.


14. This will take you to Add Sitemap.


15. In a separate window, go to Settings for your blog. Under Site Feed, copy the Site Feed URL. Or, read What Is My Blog (Site) Feed?, for instruction.


16. Go back to Add Sitemap. In the Choose type... pull down list, select Add General Web Sitemap.


17. Now check the following entries:
    
    
    
    • I've created a Sitemap in a supported format.
    
    
    • I've uploaded my Sitemap to the highest-level directory to which I have access.
    
    
    • My Sitemap URL is:
    
    
    
    Into the box for Sitemap URL, paste the Site Feed URL copied immediately above, and hit Add Web Sitemap.

Add Meta Tags to Blogs and Websites

META tags are used to help some search engines index your page, especially if your page has frames. META tags should be placed between the head and /head tags of your document.

META Keywords Tag

1. name="keywords"
   informs the search engine's spider that a group of keywords should be in this tag.

2. content="meta tags, search, homepage, web sites"
   is your list of keywords and key phrases. In the "keywords" tag, you separate each keyword or key phrase by placing a comma between them.

Be careful not to repeat the same thing too many times here, and be sure the keywords are relevant to the content on your page. The Search Engines are attempting to crack down on people who use these tags to repeat the same word over and over in order to get a better listing, or using keywords that have nothing to do with the content of the page. For instance, if I were trying to get more traffic, I might use the phrase "Pamela Anderson" to get more people to stumble onto this page. As you can see, this page has nothing to do with Pamela Anderson, this is an HTML tutorial!

META Description Tag

1. name="description"
   tells the search engine's spider a description of the page is to follow.

2. content="How to add META tags to your page."
   is your very own description of your web page. Type in what you want the description of your page to be, and use some of your key phrases as part of the decription. Many of the search engines use this as the description that will appear in their listings.

Here is an example:-



Now we come to generating Meta Tags for newbies. To generator Meta Tags click here

Optimize Your Blog / Website For Search Engines

1) Dump The Default Template - Looks Count!
I cringe when I see a blog using the “out of the box�? Wordpress or MovableType template. Hire a designer to create a unique look for your blog, or at the very least, take advantage of some of the free templates available and customize it a bit with a unique logo or a slight color upgrade.

2) Just Say No To Bad Color Schemes
While a hot pink with lime green color scheme might be your favorite, consider what your readers will be expecting. That color scheme might work perfectly on a teenage gossip site, but would look extremely out of place as the corporate blog for a men’s suit company. Likewise, gamers would think nothing of a black background on an Xbox 360 blog, but it would look horrendous on a parenting or pregnancy site. So while you should experiment with colors to find a good mix for your blog, keep in mind user experience and their expectations.

3) RSS Me!
Make sure you have RSS available. Many hosted blogging solutions don’t have RSS automatically available, so you will need to add it. And when you do add it, ensure you have those RSS links in an obvious spot. Don’t tuck them away at the very bottom of your index page after your most recent 20 entries, or hide them on a separate “About Us�? page. Place all those handy subscribe links in your sidebar, which is exactly where people will look for them. If you use Feedburner currently, have a look at their new MyBrand option which allows you to host your own feeds for a seamless user experience.

4) Offer RSS & Feed Subscription Buttons
Yes, when people want to subscribe to a blog, they will often look for that orange RSS logo as well as the logos of the standard aggregators such as Bloglines. So it is worth the time to add the most popular ones to your blog so visitors can easily do their one-click subscriptions to your feed without it require much effort on their part. If you make it hard to subscribe, most just won’t bother. FeedButton offers a service that allows you to offer multiple RSS aggregator and feed reader buttons with a single expanding rollover button.

5) Offer Posts Via Email
Some people just don’t get RSS. So cater to them by offering them an option to get your blog posts by email instead. The most popular service to do this automatically is FeedBlitz, although there are also many other tools available to do this.

6) Decide On Full Or Partial Feeds
Do you offer full feeds or partial feeds? This is a personal preference, and is often dependent on what market space you are blogging in. One option is to offer two feeds, one being an ad-supported full feed, with an RSS ad included, and the other being an ad-free snippet copy of the feed, where readers won’t see ads but will have to actually view your blog in order to read your full entry. But this will often come down to personal preference, and the preferences of your readers.

7) Write Compelling Snippets/Descriptions
If you do use snippets for your RSS feed, be sure to make them compelling or leave readers with a cliffhanger to encourage them to click and read the full entry. This will get you many more readers to your entries than just using the default option of including the first X number of words in the blog post as the snippet. Use your excerpts to generate interest and clicks.

8) Pay Attention to How You Write.
One of my favorite bloggers has the unfortunate habit of writing detailed long entries… without a single paragraph break and with the double whammy of also writing with a font size smaller than usual. If I look up for a moment, it is hard to find my place again in her 1000 word entries. As a result, I don’t read it as often as I would like to, simply because reading it is such a painful experience.

9) Spelling Counts
Spelling is also worth mentioning. Add one of the many spell checkers to your internet browser and run a quick spell check before you publish your entry. Every word doesn’t have to be perfect, and I am certainly guilty myself of letting on occasional typo slip through unnoticed. But I also get annoyed when I am reading typo after typo after typo in an entry. And yes, if it happens enough, I will unsubscribe out of sheer frustration.

10) Fontography Counts
Make the font easy to read. Some bloggers think it is cool to have their handwriting turned into a customized font, or use a trendy font that would be better suited to a scrapbook layout. But not everyone has those wild and weird fonts installed, which means that those people will see a standard font such as Times New Roman, and it can really kill the look of your blog. So instead design the text of your blog entries to use a standard font in a standard size.

11) Don't Forget Navigation
Is this blog part of a larger site, such as a corporate blog on a site for a major company? Don’t just link to the main page of the blog. Syndicate your recent headlines in the sidebar to encourage visitors on the main site to check out the blog too.

12) How Fast is Your Host?
Another one of my favorite blogs has such a slow response time when I click from the snippet in my RSS to the full blog entry that I only actually end up waiting around for it to load about 10% of the time. Don’t lose readers because your hosting company thinks 30 seconds is a perfectly reasonable amount of time to load up a page.

13) Avoid Widget Overload!
Yes, there are definitely some cool widgets you can add to your blog, such as MyBlogLog or a Flickr photo box tied to your photo gallery. But be aware that having a large number of javascripts can slow down your site. So don’t sacrifice timely loading time for nice-but-not-all-that-necessary widgets.

14) Have Descriptive Titles
Some blog software actually makes your entry titles seem pretty repetitious in the search engine result pages, and can result in a lower click through than you might have had otherwise with highly optimized titles. If your title’s say something like “Jason’s Tech Industry Rants & Ramblings Blog >> New Xbox 360 title announced for April release�? you should change it to “New Xbox 360 title announced for April release�?. Unless you are well known as an authority blog in that market, the blog name is simply wasting crucial space at the beginning of the title tag and causing the rest of the entry title to end up getting truncated in the search results. And make sure your titles actually enhance the entry and don't leave the reader wondering what on earth the blog entry could be about. Ensuring you have great titles when you have a small readership and are depending on search engines to send you readers is one of the first steps you should take to optimize your blog.

15) Look at your Cascading Style Sheets.
Most blogs use a tremendous amount of CSS to create that custom look. And while most of the “out of the box�? designs that come standard with the installed template include all CSS in an external file, there definitely are some blog designers who will put their CSS on the individual template pages rather than placing it all in an external CSS file. And when you don’t place CSS in an external file, it can clutter up your pages and result in the most important part of the page – the entry text – being much further down in the HTML code when it has to go after the masses of CSS coding lines.

16) Post Often
The more frequently you post, the more likely Googlebot and other bots will stop by on a more regular basis. If you only post once in a blue moon, expect that it might take a while for Google to stop by and see that you actually have updated again. Google loves updated fresh sites, so it make sense to feed the bot what it wants.

17) Spread the Link Love
If you are blogging about a story, link up the original story as well as other’s commentary on the same topic. When you do so, you will often make those bloggers aware of your blog’s existence (if they weren’t already) when people click from your blog to theirs. And it also increases the odds that they will either link to you on that story or on something you blog about in the future.

18) Be Aware of Your Anchor Text
When you link to someone’s blog entry, or even a previous blog entry on your own site, make sure you link well. This means instead of linking to someone’s blog entry with the anchor text “click here�?, you link to them using anchor text related to the blog entry, such as “Jason’s scoop on the new Widget Xbox 360 game�?.

19) Create Unique Stories
Bloggers love to link to other bloggers. When you write original blog entries, rather than just rehashing something someone else has already said, you increase the odds that someone will find yours interesting enough to link to and talk about. And a reader of that blogger’s blog might read the entry and decide to write something about what you said as well, meaning yet another link as well. And if you are fortunate, it will go viral, meaning suddenly it seems like every blogger in your market space is talking about what you wrote. Rinse and repeat as often as possible for maximum exposure and link juice.

20) Use a Related Posts Plugin
Not only does this make sense to keep readers around for other articles on your site that are related to your current post, but it also allows you to deeplink from a current page on your blog to older entries. Often, older entries get buried several pages deep on an archive page, and this allows you to showcase entries written months or years previously and give those “oldies but goodies�? an extra little kick in the search engines. There are several related post plugins available depending on which blog platform you use.

21) Ping Other Sites
When you add a new blog entry, you might want to ping site such as Technorati and FeedBurner to let them know you have a brand new blog entry on your site. You can also now ping Google’s Blog Search as well for faster indexing in their blog search engine at blogsearch.google.com. Automatic pinging is an option in the control panel of most blog platforms including WordPress and MovableType. And Ping-o-Matic offers a service that allows you to quickly pick and chose what to ping.

22) Buy Your Own Domain Name
Don’t always think your free blog hosting company will be around forever. What will you do if you build up a loyal readership then one day you discover yourblogname.examplebloghost.com no longer works because examplebloghost.com has gone out of business? You want to make sure the search engines have a URL they will always find your blog at, rather than have to worry about them re-indexing your previously well-ranked blog on am entirely new domain… that is if you are lucky enough to get your blog posts from your free hosting company. Both Google's Blogger & Wordpress allow you to use their hosted blog service while displaying it on your own domain instead of their own branded one.

23) Manage Your Trackback & Comment Spam

You don’t want Google or Yahoo to find masses of spammy links on your site to all manner of less-than-quality sites submitted to your blog by a blog spammer. Use one of the many tools on the market for your blog platform to manage both comment and trackback spam.

24) Use a Good URL Structure
Don’t use “permalinks�? such as www.yourblogsite.com/?p=123 . Instead, use www.yourblogsite.com/2007/01/01/blog_entry_title_here. Most blogging platforms allow you to change from the standard numbered permalinks to this style of search engine friendly ones. And just in case the blog platform you use has funky dynamic URLs for each entry, you will want to ensure that the bots can crawl them easily or use a mod rewrite to create a good structure such as in the example.

25) Use Great Categories
When you write a post, place it in 1 to 3 different categories related to the post. For example, and article on the television show Grey's Anatomy could go under "Grey's Anatomy" and "ABC". Avoid the temptation to add it to ten different categories though, such as including "drama," "hospital," "interns" and "Seattle" because that is just overkill. But if you wrote something great on Grey's Anatomy, you have made it easy for your reader to find all your posts on Grey's Anatomy because they simply have to click on the category link at the top or bottom of the entry.

26) Registering your blog on Technorati and ensuring it gets pinged with new posts. It's the leading search engine for blogs and can drive a substantial amount of traffic. It also serves as a scoreboard of sorts by tracking how many blogs have "voted" for you with a link.

27) Managing your blogroll strategically. You'll need to link to major blogs to be credible, but it's acceptable to broker link-for-link trades with smaller ones (assuming they're relevant and useful to your readers). Use Technorati to find the "small fish" and drop them an email.

While some bloggers insist that search engine rankings will come naturally to those who wait, who really wants to wait for Google? A blogger can run into several unique challenges when it comes to optimizing for search engines, and it makes sense to get the jump on it now than simply hoping that if you write it, the bots will come. It is far easier to ensure you have a well optimized blog now than trying to figure out what the issue is 6 months down the road when only your blog’s index page is found in Google!

Does anyone else have tips they would have put in their own top 25 list of blog optimization tips? I had some that didn't make the cut for the top list, but am interested to hear what others feel are the most important tips.