Search Engine Optimization Tips

I'm so happy because today, my blog reached the 300,000 pageview marker!

I've been up and running for just over two years and I am so happy to reach this point. I hope the blog has helped the people that have been reading my posts.

In that time, I have also seen the number of steroid withdrawal blogs grow exponentially. It is fantastic that each blog is a little beacon that someone may find in their search for a better way than steroid creams.

A few weeks ago, I posted some blogging tips, to help all of the bloggers reach their full potential. If you haven't read the blogging tips guide, go and do it now and then come back to this page when you are finished!

Point 7 on the list was SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. I wanted to talk about it a bit more today, because I think that my tips will really help bloggers to get more pageviews and increase traffic to their blog. As most of our blogs are linked, we thus increase traffic for all of the other steroid withdrawal blogs too.

SEO Basics

Title:

When we type something into Google, we want to get the most relevant results for our search. To make this happen, Google use "bots" to crawl the web, checking out websites.

To deem whether a blog is relevant, the bots will first look at the title of the site. This is why it is so important to have a strong title for your blog. There is a temptation when you set up a blog to give it a humorous or clever name, perhaps a play on words, but it does you no favours in the Google rankings. If someone types in "Eczema" on a search, the most likely sites to rank high on Google will be those that have "eczema" in the title. For me, one of the best examples of good SEO in a title is Jenny Stradling's I Have Eczema blog. Imagine someone is searching the web for information. They are likely to type in a term like "I have eczema" and Jenny's blog will pop up high on the rankings.

By the way, if anyone is unhappy with the title of their blog after reading this, it is very easy to change it in the blogger settings to something a little more SEO friendly. It is worth it in the long term as it will make your blog more visible.

Post Titles

The next thing the bots are looking for is the name of your post. I wish I had known this in the past, especially in the beginning of this blog, as I used to just put the day as the title of the post. Who is going to type "Day 276" into a search engine? Probably nobody.

These days I try and think carefully how to word my titles. Simple is best. Think about who you want to reach with your post and use it in the title. Think about what people are typing into a search engine. For example, I recently posted about my experience with moisturiser withdrawal. I entitled the post "What Happens When You Stop Using Moisturisers?" It was a strong title because it was what I imagined someone would type in if they were searching for this information. Now if I put "A Month of MW" as my title, it would be a very weak title, because nobody types in "MW" into Google when searching for information about moisturiser withdrawal.

 

Keywords and Content

Now its time to look at the body of your blogpost. You want to fill it with as many keywords as you can, but don't overstuff it or the Google bots will detect that something funny is going on. For example, if I used the term "Topical Steroid Withdrawal" 20 times in a short post, Google would actually count it against me, because the language is not natural.

Again, think about terms that people use for searches. Unless someone is familiar with the term "Topical Steroid Withdrawal", it is more likely that they will be searching for things like "eczema", "rash", "steroid cream" or "burning rash". So try and get these terms and phrases into the body of your text whenever you can, so that the search engine picks up on them. Be diverse! Cast your keywords out like a net. Try and think what people will be typing when they search the web.

There is a tool on Blogger where you can actually look at the terms that people used in their search. It can give you a good idea of which search terms are popular and what words will be beneficial in your text.

A word to the wise about abbreviations. I'm VERY guilty of this, but I am thinking about it more seriously these days. In the ITSAN community, we waffle on about RSS (Red skin syndrome), TSW (topical steroid withdrawal), TSA (addiction) and MW (moisturiser withdrawal). I know that it saves time by using the acronyms, but its poor for SEO. Do you really think that if someone types TSW into Google, that they are going to be directed to one of our blogs? Of course not, so let's try and minimise the use of abbreviations in our posts unless our fingers are getting really tired typing!

Links and Comments

Links and comments are the lifeblood of a blog. It changes the blog from a standalone piece to a community piece. We share, others share back. links are created. People visit our pages and our visibility rises.

A word of caution though. Avoid excessive and unnecessary linking that is designed to manipulate the system. Deliberately and purposefully creating many like-for-like links for the sole purpose of manipulating Google page rank is AGAINST THE WEBMASTER RULES and can get you into a lot of trouble. Don't do it!

When linking to another blog, try and include a keyword in the link. For example, let's imagine that I want to link to Tracy's blog "Stopping Topical Steroids" (great SEO title by the way!). I could do it like this:

To read Tracy's blog, click here

This is BAD SEO!!!!!

Better SEO would be:

Read Tracy's blog about stopping topical steroids.

This time, the link highlights relevant keywords. This means that if someone searches for that term on Google, they are more likely to be directed to Tracy's blog. Using the "click here" link doesn't really benefit anyone.

Of course, the links don't have to be external. You can see at the beginning of this article, I added an internal link to my post about blogging tips. Its another great way to increase pageviews and encourage people to look at the rest of the content on the blog.

Comments are also very important. Encourage readers to comment and debate and then remember to reciprocate by leaving comments on other people's blogs. Lots of comments on a post will give the blog a sense of community and encourage readers to return.

Google Plus

This is a relatively new one for me, but as soon as I joined Google plus, my pageviews rocketed to about 800 a day! It's all about the community. So remember, if you like a post, don't forget to hit the +1 button!

Summary

Ok class, I know its a lot to take in, but let me summarise the main points:

1: Think about your blog title. If it doesn't include one of the following words, it really should: Eczema, steroids, steroid cream, cortisone, rash, skin, corticosteroids, Red Skin Syndrome, topical steroids.

2: Give blogposts meaningful titles. Don't be like me in the early days! If writing in diary style it is better to write "Day 40: Spreading Rash" than just "Day 40". Add a few keywords to the title. Keep it simple.

3: Put plenty of keywords in the body of the text and try not to use abbreviations like TSW too often!

4: Make links count. Highlight important keywords when creating a link, rather than putting "Click here".

5: Be part of the blogging community. Engage with other bloggers by leaving comments and linking to their pages. Don't forget the Google plus +1 button!

Now go out and get lots of pageviews! What are you waiting for?