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In my next few posts I am going to talk a bit about SEO for Blogs. Doing Search Engine Optimization for blogs is pretty similar to doing SEO for a regular website, but there are a few additional techniques for bloggers. If you are using Wordpress there are a few essential wordpress plugins that you should install and specific settings for your permalinks.

I am going to split my SEO for Blogs series into 5 different parts:

1) Keyword Research

2) Optimimum Permalink Structure for Wordpress SEO

3) Essential Wordpress Plugins for SEO

4) On site optimization for blogs

5) Off site optimization for blogs

Ideally you should think about keyword research before you start your blog. If you have been blogging for a while and haven’t yet done this don’t worry as it is possible to do it now and then use your keywords in your future blog posts.

When I am doing SEO for a blog I like to split my keyword research into two parts:

(1) Find a reasonably high traffic phrase for my blog in general

(2) Make a big list of lower traffic (less competitive) phrases for my blog posts

There are lots of keyword research tools available, but the quickest and easiest free tool that I know of is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. All you need to do is:

• Enter 1 or more suggestions for keywords in the box
• Choose “All countries and Territories” from the drop down menu (or the specific country that you are targeting)
• Click the “Get Keywords” button
• I also recommend choosing “Exact” from the “Match Type” menu on the right hand side

You will see a big list of keyword phrases that should include the keywords that you typed in and some related keywords. For each keyword you will also see the estimated number of monthly searches for each keyword. I usually find that this number is slightly inflated but it acts as a good guide and a od way to compare different keywords.

If you are finding it hard to create a big list of keywords you may want to consider a subscription to Wordtracker as this tool is very helpful at suggesting related keywords and makes it easy to build massive lists of keywords.

You probably want to go through the above process a few times for different keyword combinations and then save your keyword lists to a text file or a spreadsheet.

Next you should try and decide on 1-2 keyword phrases for your blog as a whole. You should choose something that has more than 3000 seearches per month and your aim will be to get the home page of your blog on the first page of Google for that keyword phrase. Before you decide on a phrase it is important that you check out the competition for your phrase. Go to Google and enter your phrase and take a look at the websites that are on the first and second pages of results for that keyword. Can you beat them? If it looks impossible (based on the number of backlinks that they have) then search for an alternative phrase.

Once you have your main phrase(s) you should aim to construct a big list of less competitive keywords. Look for keyword phrases that have only a few hundred searches per month. Typically these will have lower competition than your main phrase. Keep this big list of keyword phrases somewhere safe and whenever you make a blog post choose a keyword phrase from your list to base your blog post on.

In the next few parts of my SEO for Blogs series I will cover in detail how to optimize your blog and your blog posts for your chosen keywords and what essential settings and Wordpress plugins you need to setup to maximise your SEO success.

Read Part Two – Optimimum Permalinks Structure for Wordpress SEO