Author: Kevin Crawley
Blog Design and Theme
This is your chance to make a great first impression.
Personally, I’m a fan of WordPress. However, no matter the blog publisher or website host…NEVER go with just the standard/default template that is available. Search for templates and themes that are “clean” and fresh looking. If you are using a lot of pictures and videos, you may want a theme that is darker in presentation. Lots of text and information, lighter colored themes seem to work best.
Keyword Selection
We could really spend all day talking about this topic, but for the sake of the article we’ll keep it short. Effective keyword usage is your way of telling the search engines what information your website contains. If you are marketing a dog training course, your blog/site should be peppered with the phrase “dog training” through the site. Never, EVER…do keyword stuffing (using the same phrase over and over) it is a quick way to get your website sent to the bottom of the pack.
META-TAG Optimization
In all honesty, there are some people that say this is unnecessary. My opinion is that every little bit helps. Plus, for the most part, once you do this you rarely, if ever, need to go back and update it. This is the area that you can put your top 10-20 keyword phrases. Additionally, use a MetaTag description that is a 4-6 sentence description of your website.
Make sure you place several of your keywords in this description.
Link using Keywords
No website should be an island to itself. No links in or out is a surefire way to make sure you don’t get any search engine traffic. Whether you are linking to or from your site, use one of your relevant keywords as the anchor text. Simply using “Click Here” does very little for your SEO and internet marketing.
Link within your blog/site
As you create more articles and post more content, its safe to say that you will discuss the same or similar information in different postings. Link to other articles and postings within your blog. Give the search engines every piece of help in indexing your site.
Good Permalink Structure
Again, using every opportunity to get our keywords involved in our internet marketing…make sure that you are using good permalink structure. What’s a permalink? The URL for this post as it appears on my site is http://kevincrawley.com/2010/02/27/seo-for-blogs-internet-marketi
ng-101 With this URL, my keywords “internet marketing” is getting another opportunity to shine. Had I not made the change, my URL by default would have been something like
www.kevincrawley.com/?p=5
Get a Domain Name
If you are on a budget…fine, get the free option of a blogger.com or wordpress.com site. However, if you really want to make some headway with any type of marketing strategy for the internet, invest the few dollars and get a domain name. There are several hosting companies out there. My personal preference is Global Domains International. I’m an affiliate and it allows me to build an income by sharing the service which makes my hosting FREE!
These are just a few steps that you should take if you want to improve you search engine optimization. No, you will not jump to the top of Google rankings on day one, but consistent effort and actions will bring you results that will pay off.
About the author:
Kevin Crawley is a trainer/teacher and entrepreneur that loves to see people reach their fullest potential. Find out more about him and get more tips at www.kevincrawley.com
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This week’s featured client website is: 
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