Keywords are the means by which your blog is indexed and placed in the search rankings. It pays to do keyword research on your subject and use these keywords at appropriate places in your blog.........
After deciding on the subject of your blog (if it is based on a single subject) you will have to do some research to find out the correct keywords for your blog. First to see the competition for your keywords enter your subject line in the Google search box and hit Enter. Google will turn up all the websites having that keyword and the number of sites will also be listed. Look at the Page source of your competing sites for the keywords they use by going to View--->Page Source.
Remember the number for your site will have to climb through that number to reach the top of the rankings. If you are still undecided on the subject it would be better to choose a subject where the competition is less and your site will appear on the first page of the search results.
You can also see the number of blogs on the same subject by conducting a search at Technorati.com for your subject keywords.
The market for your subject can be seen by going to sites like wordtracker.com and overture.com. Enter your keyword in the box and hit Enter and you will see how many people have been searching for that keyword. Always choose a subject with a large enough demand yet not too much competition. I have blogged about this in some detail in How to start a Blog.
The Title metatag should contain five to ten keywords. It should be descriptive about your site. Avoid having a title like "Welcome to...my site". Total numbe of eighty to ninety characters.
The description metatag should contain around 160 to 250 characters including spaces. The description should be summarized. The keyword metatag should contain your keywords in order of importance. Commonly misspelt words and plurals should be included in the keywors tag.
Do not stuff it with keywords and do not repeat keywords. Around 800 to 1000 characters (40 to 45 words) with spaces seems to be the optimum size. You can repeat the keywords but not one after another, not continuously in a row and less than four times. Google and now Alta Vista are now ignoring the keyword tag.
Separate each keyword and keyword phrase with commas. You can generate metatags automatically online based on the keywords you provide. Just Google for the term "metatag generator" and go to any one site, type in your data and then copy and paste the metatags in your blog template just below the <head> tag. Use those keywords which are repeated in the body text and the other tags.
The keywords in the metatags should match the body context.
Do not indulge in Keyword spamming or Keyword stuffing. Search engines are aware of these strategies. Keyword density is the percentage of words on a web page that match a specified set of keywords. In the context of search engine optimization keyword density can be used as a factor in determining whether a web page is relevant to a specified keyword or keyword phrase. There are a number of online keyword density analyzers where you can submit your page for an analysis. As before Google for them to analyze your keywords. An optimum figure happens to be about 500 to 800 words per page with a keyword density of 5-8%.
Your images ALT attribute should also contain your keywords. Enter about two or three keywords in the ALT tag besides describing your image. Enter only those keywords you have already entered in all the other places above. For example :
<IMG SRC="url of your picture" width="100" height="90" alt="Beta Blogger for Dummies">
HEADINGS : All post headings should be enclosed in H1 tags. Your most important keywords should be repeated in the Headings.
Keyword Tips and Tricks for Bloggers. |
How to start a Blog. |
First you will have to think of a subject to blog about.... Technorati Tags:blogging, keywords. subjects
An ideal choice is to blog about something you are passionate about. Something about which you cannot stop talking. It may be politics it, may be spirituality. It must be something you know a lot about. Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.
You can write about your hobby, or about your career. To attract readers you should choose a best selling topic like sex, scandals, gossip, films, latest news. This topic should be something about which you can deliver content to your readers at daily/weekly/monthly intervals. Longer than that and your readers will lose intrest and move away. It is best to write about something you are doing daily. Then you will have something to write about at least once in three-four days.
D. H. Lawrence (1885 - 1930)
If you are thinking about earning money from your blog then you have to consider the competition. Money can't buy happiness, but neither can poverty.
Take a look at the competiton by going to www.google.com and typing your subject-line in the text box and hitting 'Search'. Google will search out all the websites with the same subject. See the number of sites which turn up in the results and consider whether you want to be a small fish in a big lake or by narrowing the search results you can turn into a big fish in a small pond. For example if you want to blog about your stamp-collecting hobby a quick search on Google shows more than four million websites on this subject. Looking for 'Olympic stamp collecting' turns up less than 250,000 websites and 'olympic stamp collecting greek' turns up some 90,000 sites. You will be much better off competing with 90,000 than with four million sites. This is the Age of Superspecialization and the more and more you know (about less and less) you will be appreciated by more and more people.
Leo Rosten (1908 - )
You have also to think about the demand for your subject if you want to monetize your site/blog. To research this head over to keyword research sites like http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ or www.wordtracker.com. The former is free while the latter offers a free trial. Type your subject line in the text box provided and press Enter to give you the number of searches conducted for that subject in the previous month. You can type in various subject-lines and compare the numbers. The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization.
A search for 'stamp-collecting' shows some 9,500 people have searched for it during the previous month while 'hiking' returns 45.000 searches. Hence it would be more lucrative to blog about hiking than stamp-collecting. If you want to monetize your blog it always helps to know the market. If you want to cater to a niche make sure that it is well populated otherwise you may die a quiet death due to lack of attention.
Mikhail Gorbachev, June 8, 1990
After choosing your subject you have to choose your blog host. If you are a novice it is best to start on a free host where you can try out your site and once you start attracting plenty visitors move over to paid hosting. Blogger.com is free and comes with plenty addons which makes it one of the ideal experimentation grounds for newbies. You can choose to stay on after turning pro as there are no time limits here. They have also introduced beta blogger with many improved functions ideal for a novice.
To summarize review the SUPPLY (sites turned up by Google Search) and the DEMAND (Number of searches for the topic in the last month) As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
and your PASSION for the subject and decide whether to blog or blog not! In the Age of Globalization it should not proove too difficult to find your niche.
Josh Billings (1818 - 1885)












