Some people think that SEO is something that can just be 'done
later' but SEO goes into the way your blog is setup and into
everything that you write so it's a good idea to get an idea about
it right at the very beginning so that you don't have to go back
and correct mistakes later on which can be very difficult if not
impossible in some cases.

Why Bother With SEO?
--------------------

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. Search engines are an
excellent source of completely free traffic that continues to pour
in for years to come but it usually takes a long time for a brand
new site to begin getting traction in the search engines which is
another reason why it makes sense to consider it from day 1.

Here is an important point - ANY blog can build up a significant
amount of search engine traffic over time even if that blog does
not naturally lend itself to SEO. Why? Simply due to the sheer
amount of content that gets posted to a blog.

If you create a few good articles every week (say 3), that really
adds up over time. In a year you will have around 150 posts! Every
single one of those posts can rank in the search engines and even
though they may not all be individually optimised for specific
keywords, they WILL bring in some traffic.

The Importance of Backlinks
---------------------------

What I am going to talk about in the rest of this lesson is called
on-page optimisation and that is where you make sure that your post
is optimised towards your chosen keywords. However that is only one
half of the SEO process and is arguably the less-important half.

If Google has two pages that are equally optimised towards a
keyword then how does it decide which one to rank higher? There are
many factors but one very major factor is the backlinks to the page
and these are simply links from another website.

Over time you will want to grow your backlinks as much as you can
as this helps you rank higher and higher. With my Internet
marketing blog I must admit that I rarely pay much attention to
on-page SEO as I tend to just write what comes to mind without
really worrying about keywords but over the last year I have
attracted thousands of backlinks which means that whatever I do
choose to write about will still bring me search traffic because my
blog ranks quite well for terms in my posts.

You don't need to worry too much about building backlinks at the
beginning but you do want to know how to do the basic on-page SEO
so that when you start to create your first few posts you can be
sure that you are getting it right.

SEO is a massive subject and is an industry in itself. SEO
consultants will often charge companies thousands of dollars to
optimise their websites because of the power it has to draw so much
traffic. Now I am not an SEO expert by any means and this is a
blogging course and not an SEO course so I'm only giving you the
basics here. If you want to learn more then by far the best
resource for the individual is the training program run by Aaron
Wall. He wrote the original SEO Book and has now converted it into
an in-depth training program with over 100 modules:

http://www.seobook.com/2467.html

Optimising Your Posts For On-Page SEO
-------------------------------------

The first step in optimising your posts is knowing what keyword
phrase you want to target. It is possible to target more than one
but much more difficult. Now one thing that I would emphasise here
is that as a blogger, particularly if you are starting out, if you
have no idea about what keywords you want to target then just don't
worry about it as its best to concentrate on writing good content
than thinking about search engines. But if you're writing a blog
about digital camera's for example and writing a post about a
particular model then it makes sense to optimise that post to the
model of the camera as that is something that would be searched on
in Google.

There are several places where you need to ensure your keyword goes:

1) The title - at the very beginning if possible. This is the
single most important element.

2) The post content - you need to make sure you are writing about
what you want to target! Don't overdo it but make sure it appears a
handful of times throughout the post.

3) Tags - WordPress and other blogging platforms allow you to add
tags to posts and this is a great way to add keywords to any post.

4) The URL - if you are using WordPress then this is very easy to
do because it has a feature to allow you to convert your post title
into the URL and I'll show you a video that demonstrated how to do
that later in the course.

These are the most important places to put your keywords and this
is all you really need to know when you're starting out. By the way
if you don't know how to do this stuff don't worry because soon in
the course I'm going to be getting onto the technical stuff and I
have a bunch of free videos that show you how to do this techy stuff.

What If You Have An Established Blog?
-------------------------------------

If you already have a blog and this is the first time you have
thought about SEO there are some things that you can do to tweak
things. One thing that you should NOT do is change your post URL's
because Google will still be indexing the old ones and if you
change them you will have broken links.

However what you can do is change your titles and the copy text in
your posts. One mistake that people often make is putting their
keywords at the end of their title rather than at the beginning for
example if you are targeting the phrase "make money blogging" which
is best out of these two titles:

- 10 Great Ways to Make Money Blogging Today!
- Make Money Blogging - 10 Killer Ideas!

The latter title is more SEO-friendly as it puts your keywords at
the beginning so you can go back and tweak old posts in this way if
you like. You can also check through the post itself making sure
the keyword appears a few times and if your blogging software
supports tags then make sure you tag it with your keyword.

Once you make changes it can take a while for Google to pick it up
and act on it so don't expect results overnight!

Note that if your URL's are not optimised then it is possible to
restructure them to better ones and do something called a 301
redirect to tell Google that the link has changed. However, I'm
going to pass the buck on this one and plug Aaron Wall's membership
site again as I don't know how to do this properly myself and I had
to get help when I had to redirect one of my domains recently.
Here's the link for the SEO Book program again:

http://www.seobook.com/2467.html

Start Blogging Today

I teach everyone free, how to Make Money with Free Blogs at my new website www.makemoneybanc.blogspot.com.