“Why SEO” – this is a very basic question that gets asked very often.

The answer is simple: We do search engine optimization to get more unpaid search traffic from various search engines like Google (also known as organic traffic).

In short, better SEO = More traffic from search engines.

Measuring what we want to improve

Since we set out to improve visitor traffic by doing SEO, the first thing that we need to do is to measure the traffic to your blog.

Unless you can measure the traffic, how can you know how effective is your SEO effort?

So, the very first step for you is to find a good traffic analysis tool if you don’t already have one. That way, you would know any change in traffic that happens due to your SEO.

You would also be able to analyze the changes in traffic patterns, and would be able to pinpoint what SEO steps are more effective for your blog or website.

(Wondering what you should look at in Google Analytics to measure the effectiveness of your SEO?

Please come back to read “What factors to check in your site’s traffic analysis package for better SEO”)

Google Analytics – The best

If you haven’t chosen a traffic analysis / visitor statistic analysis tool, here is what I always recommend: Google Analytics. In fact, you can opt for it even if you are already using some other website traffic analysis tool.

It is a great, absolutely free tool from the Google stable. Anyone, from any country, can register for Google Analytics.

If you have an existing Google account, you can easily register using that as well.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a JavaScript based traffic analysis tool.

When you register your blog or website for Google Analytics, you are given a small JavaScript code snippet that you need to put on all the web pages of your blog or website.

The ideal way to do this is to include the code in the template of the website, so that it automatically gets inserted into all the web pages!

What can be measured?

Google Analytics is a tool that would never stop to amaze you – it is capable of measuring LOTS of things about site traffic.

Here are just a few important matrices that Google Analytics would provide:

• Number of page views
• Number of visits
• Number of unique visitors
• Number of pages per visit
• Bounce rate
• Average time on site
• Percentage of new visits
• Referring sites
• Analysis of sources of traffic to your site
• Top landing pages
• Top content of your blog or website
• Keywords used by people to find your site on search engines

(Don’t worry if you don’t understand some of the terms – we would be discussing them here in the coming weeks)

You can view most of this data for any period you choose – from just one day to a few years! And you can specify exact date ranges for which you want to check the data.

Remember – this is just a fraction of the features available from Google Analytics. You have to try it to get the feel of the power of this tool!

How does Google Analytics look?

Here’s a screenshot of Google Analytics:

Sign up for Google Analytics now!

Signing up for Google Analytics is easy (and free) – don’t delay it!

Here’s the link: http://www.google.com/analytics/ 

Related posts:

1. How to get your blog or website indexed quickly by Google
2. Great content for great SEO – Common goal for search engines and you

Links pointing to your blog or website are extremely important for SEO. (Check out “Backlinks – The fastest way to good SEO” for more)

• They help you get indexed faster by Google and other search engines by providing a pathway to your blog
• They make you an authority site in the eyes of search engines
• The backlinks drive traffic to your blog

How to get the backlinks?

For best SEO, backlinks should be obtained from varied sources, and the sources of the backlinks should preferably be websites and blogs having a similar topic.

(Check out “Where to get backlinks from for good SEO” for more details on this)

But getting backlinks might be a little difficult when you are just establishing your blog. Once you get famous by providing good content, backlinks would pour in from other blogs.

But in the beginning, you can start by giving it a little push yourself.

Start your link building

When you want to get your blog indexed by Google, or just want those initial few backlinks, why wait for others to provide them?

You can start by starting an announcement blog at free blogging sites like WordPress.org and Blogspot.com! And what should you do with these blogs?

1. Link to your actual blog or website

On each of these blogs, you can have a post announcing your actual blog – and this announcement post should contain links to your blog with keyword rich anchor text.

These posts can be in the form of a press release informing people about your blog.

2. Link form the Blogroll

These new blogs would have their own blogrolls in the sidebar. Put your actual blog in these blogrolls – again, with keywords.

(For example, BlogSEOExpert.com would be in the blogroll as “BlogSEOExpert.com – SEO for Blogs” or “SEO for Blogs” instead of just “BlogSEOExpert.com”)

3. Category and Tags

On the WordPress.org and BlogSpot.com announcement blogs, you would need to provide a category to your announcement post. You can also provide various tags to this post.

Name the category and the tags carefully – they should be your keywords.

Advantages of blogs on WordPress.org and Blogspot / Blogger

There are multiple benefits of this strategy.

1. You get keyword rich backlinks to your blog or website.
2. Google and other search engines index WordPress and Blogspot very regularly.

Your announcement blogs would get listings on WordPress.org and BlogSpot.com under the tags and category you have specified. Since you would have specified your keywords here, people would come to these announcement blogs when they look for your keywords.

And since these blogs would have a post linking to your original blog, there is a fair chance that they would come to your blog – which means additional traffic!

Exercise caution – Don’t go overboard

Yes, there are many benefits. But please be advised that you can’t overdo this. That would be spamming.

Having one or two announcement blogs / posts is fine, but starting many such blogs just to get backlinks would take you to the “not so good” (read: blackhat) territory.

Related posts:

1. Review of WordPress (WP) Plugin – SEO Title Tag
2. Improve SEO of your blog by linking blog posts internally
3. How to get your blog or website indexed quickly by Google

You put in a lot of hard work in

• Choosing the domain name
• Selecting the hosting provider & hosting plan
• Choosing the blogging platform

You also spend hours on

• Selecting the theme
• Setting up various plugins (including SEO plugins)
• Writing blog posts and publishing them (with one keyword per post)

Now what? What is the next step? Do you just keep waiting for Google to come to your blog or website?

How can you get your blog or website indexed by Google real quick? Is there a fast-track process?

Here are the things that you can do to get you blog or website indexed faster by Google.

Get incoming links

Try to get some incoming links from other blogs and websites in your niche. If possible, try to get them from sites that already have some traffic, and have a good page rank (PR).

If the blog you have started is not your first blog, you can easily leverage your existing blog to get some links to the new blog!

For more on getting backlinks, please check out “Where to get backlinks from for good SEO“.

Produce fresh content

To make Google come to your blog, and to keep it coming back frequently, you need to produce fresh content constantly.

Write blog posts regularly, and Google should be at your doorstep sooner rather than later!

Utilize the power of Social Media

Submit some of your good articles to social media sites. These include (but are definitely not limited to):

• Digg
• Stumbleupon
• Delicious
• Mixx
• Technorati

Google constantly indexes these social media websites, and any link back to your blog would be followed very quickly!

If you know some power users for these sites and can get your articles submitted through them, even better! This would mean that:

• Your post gets a presence on the social media site, and Google would find you
• Even more users get exposed to your blog post submission (due to the power user status of the submitter), and you get increased traffic at your blog. And possibly, some backlinks as well!

Use Twitter

It is still unclear if Google would follow & index your links posted in Twitter (due to the “no follow” attribute, but if nothing else, it would drive traffic to your blog and might earn you some back links!

Implement Google AdSense

When you have Google AdSense on your blog, Google needs to know the content of your blog before it can start presenting the context sensitive ads.

What does this mean? It means that Google indexes you blog to find out what it contains!

This may or may not mean immediate inclusion in the Google index, but it surely helps.

Implement Google Site Search

The logic is same as above – to give accurate search results for your blog, Google needs to know its contents. This means that Google quickly indexes you site when you use Site Search!

Related posts:

1. What is Onsite and Offsite Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
2. Improve SEO of your blog by linking blog posts internally
3. Generate links to your blog through WordPress and Blogspot

In “How the page load time of your blog or website impacts SEO”, we saw that a high page load time frustrates your users.

This results in bad user experience, which ultimately leads to lower ranking on the SERPs.

What increases the page load time?

There can be many culprits that contribute to a high page load time.

You can improve on most of the factors and thus, can improve the page load time. However, there isn’t much you can do for certain other factors.

Let’s have a look at the things that affect your page load time.

Images on the webpage or post

Images are the biggest culprits in increasing the load time of your web pages. Both the size and number of images matter.

Here are a few tips as far as images go:

• Try not to have too many images in a post: 1 or 2 are just fine, unless you write about photography!
• Try not to have very large images in your posts: Larger the size of the image, the larger would be the file size. And the longer it would take to load.
• Actually resize the image, not just through HTML attributes: If you find a large image (say 1200 * 800), and want to display it only as a small image (say 500 * 333), don’t just use the HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes of the IMG tag to reduce the display size. Reduce the image dimensions physically using an image editing tool, as that would reduce the size of the image (and therefore reduce the loading time).
• Optimize the image for web usage: Use only properly optimized images, as they are smaller in size. At the least, try to reduce the color depth as long as it doesn’t impact the way the image looks. 

External scripts

Many of us put lots of scripts on our blogs or websites. These can be visitor tracking scripts (Google analytics, Sitemeter, etc), advertising scripts (Google AdSense, Chitika, etc), or some other scripts.

Of course, these scripts serve a purpose. However, refrain from having too many of them. These scripts call some function on another server, and are therefore inherently time consuming.

The higher the number of such scripts on your blog, the longer it would take to load. So, limit the number of scripts on your blog to reduce the load time.

Badges and Widgets

Various badges and widgets also call some remote server, and therefore reduce the page load time.

Is it necessary to show a badge of ALL the networks that you participate in? Is it not enough to show just a few? Similarly, is it necessary to have a lot of widgets on your blog?

Various badges and widgets not only increase the page load time, but also distract your readers from the content. This impacts the user experience negatively. (Remember, good user experience means good SEO).

Therefore, try to have only a limited number of badges and widgets on your blog or website.

Flash and Multimedia files

Flash and multimedia files (like video and audio files) are large in size, and naturally take a long time loading.

Again, reduce the number of these files in order to improve your page load time.

HTML Size

People use different softwares to create HTML files. Most software work just fine, but some (like Microsoft Word) create HTML files that are HUGE!!

Try to avoid creating HTML files using such software, or use some tool or utility to trim the HTML code created by such a software.

This would reduce the file size, and improve the loading time of the web page.

Server Load

Another reason for a high page load time can be the load on your server – if the server is getting too many requests to service, it would slow down considerably. This happens mostly on blogs and websites using a shared server.

There is not much you can do in this case – you can either shift to a better hosting provider, or can upgrade to a dedicated server that hosts only your blog or website.

Conclusion

Follow these tips, and the load time of your web pages would improve drastically. This would improve the user experience on your blog, and would therefore result in better SEO.

Related posts:

1. How the page load time of your blog or website impacts SEO
2. How to reduce bounce rate on your blog and improve SEO
3. Reduce the bounce rate, improve the SEO

Have you ever been to a blog or website, and felt frustrated because it took ages to load? This isn’t very unfamiliar, right?

Such an experience can be really frustrating. And it is more than likely that you wouldn’t want to visit that blog again!

This is a clear demonstration of the fact that a high page load time adversely impacts the user experience on your blog or website.

Today, we want everything fast. We want everything right now. And with an increase in the speed of our internet connections, we want web pages to load instantly as well.

What is an acceptable page load time?

So, what does “instantly” mean? Is it 1 second, or 15 seconds? What is a good page load time?

Of course, a lot depends on the personal preference (and tolerance!) of the visitor. However, we can have a simple rule of thumb.

I would say that a page load time of about 10 seconds on a 128 Kbps internet connection should be acceptable in most cases.

Page load time and SEO

We know that search engines are paying a close attention to the user experience on your blog or website. Therefore, it is very important to improve the user experience of your blog in order to improve SEO.

The equation is simple:

High page load time = Frustrated visitor = Bad user experience = Bad SERP rankings = Bad SEO

As a corollary,

Low page load time = Happy visitor = Good user experience = Good SERP rankings = Good SEO

Simple, isn’t it?

To know how to reduce the page load time in order to improve the SEO, please read “How to improve SEO by reducing your page load time”.

Related posts:

1. How to improve SEO by reducing your page load time
2. How to reduce bounce rate on your blog and improve SEO
3. Your blog on Google front page in 30 days – Is it even possible?

Search engines have come a long way in the last 15 years.

There was a time when the search results were totally dependent on on-page factors – primarily, the keyword density. (This led to blackhat practices like keyword stuffing).

Then, the search engines became more intelligent, and started giving more credit to offsite factors – like incoming links. This trend was started by Google. (This led to practices like link exchange or reciprocal links and link purchase).

The next step in search engine evolution was contextual sensitivity – search engines started looking at the overall context of the webpage and the website (or blog) , and started evaluating the keywords in light of this.

They also started evaluating the content and topic of the sites providing the backlinks, and started giving more importance to backlinks from websites about a similar topic.

This move towards contextual sensitivity drastically improved the quality of results on the search engine result pages (SERPs).

Now, it is time for the next step in search engine evolution.

Arrival of “User Experience” on the SEO scene

“User Experience” is the mantra for the next stage of search engine evolution.

Let’s remember – providing good content to searchers is the primary goal of search engines.

And when we say good content, it is not just the written word on the blog or website. Good content means easily readable, easily navigable, error-free on-topic content. This, over and above the written word, is what “User Experience” comprises of.

Since search engines have started giving importance to the overall user experience of blog or website visitors, it makes tremendous sense to improve the experience of your users in order to improve your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.

Factors impacting the user experience

There are lots of factors that impact the overall experience of the readers of your blog or website. The best part is – almost all of them are totally in your control!

In the coming weeks, we would discuss each in detail. Stay tuned!

Get the “User Experience Analysis Report” for your blog / website

Want to improve your readers’ experience at your blog / website for improved SEO? Want to know how your blog / website fares when it comes to user experience?

Order the “User Experience Analysis Report” today! It’s a great PDF report that contains the evaluation of your blog or website from the user experience point of view, and provides tips on improving it.

All for just $19.99!

For more details and ordering, check out  User Experience Analysis Report.

Related posts:

1. How to choose the right keywords for ranking high in search engine results
2. White hat and black hat techniques for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
3. What is Onsite and Offsite Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Leaving good comments regularly is sure to earn you a backlink or two from the author of the blog.

(Check out “Leave comments and make other bloggers link to you” for more on this)

But can commenting do more than that? Can it help you generate many backlinks? Can it help you generate traffic? Yes!

Commenting Strategy

If done correctly, leaving comments can help you:

• Build your brand
• Get lots of traffic
• Earn lots of backlinks

The catch phrase here is “if done correctly”. Let’s see what the “correct” way of commenting is to get these benefits.

Where to leave the comments?

Leaving a comment on any random blog would not help you achieve these goals. You need to leave comments at blogs that are:

• Popular (get high traffic)
• A meeting place for your target audience

Popular

The blog or website has to be popular – the more the visitors, the more people would see your comment. And the more the people seeing your comment, the more you build your brand.

Also, when your comments are meaningful and in-depth, they help you emerge as an authority. This means that many people would be tempted to check out what you write at your own blog – resulting in increased traffic to your blog!

And if they find your blog’s content good, they would link to it from their own blogs – resulting in loads of backlinks for you!

A meeting place for your target audience

You should leave comments at a blog or website that is either related to your niche, or helps people interested in your niche.

(For example, if you write about iPods, you can leave comments on blogs about iPod or Apple, or the regular technology blogs.)

That way, you would get traffic that is interested in what you write about, and would get backlinks from blogs that are related.

When to leave the comments?

Now this is extremely important.

How many times do you read a blog post, scroll to the comments, and read all the comments? “Never” is a very likely answer!

Most of us just read a couple of comments. That means that if your comment is buried way down, it would not help you achieve these goals.

So, aim to be among the first five people leaving a comment. Don’t worry, there is no rocket science here. Most bloggers have a blogging rhythm – they publish their posts at specific times of the day.

So, identify the blogs that you want to leave comments on, watch them for a couple of days, and you would know when the blog posts are published.

So, just aim and shoot

Quality of comments

Always remember, you would be able to get traffic and links only if your comments are relevant, and add to the discussion.

Leaving comments like “Great post” or “Nice ideas” will only harm your reputation, and alienate other bloggers.

So, please refrain from commenting just for the sake of commenting, and leave only quality comments.

Related posts:

1. Leave comments and make other bloggers link to you
2. Where to get backlinks from for good SEO
3. Backlinks – The fastest way to good SEO

Backlinks from any and every blog or website would not help you in your SEO efforts. You need to get backlinks from quality sites in order to rank higher in search engine result pages (SERPs).

What can be better than getting links from other good quality blogs?

Links from other quality blogs in your niche are extremely valuable for good SEO. The problem is getting the other blogger to link to you!

Leave comments, get backlinks

Ok, it is not that easy. However, it isn’t very difficult either. Read on.

When you leave meaningful comments on someone’s blog, he or she is much more likely to link back to you. Here are the reasons:

1. Commenting creates inherent liking

Every blogger likes to have a community around his or her blog. Comments and commenters are an integral part of this community.

When you leave comments on a blog, you automatically get into the good books of the blogger, because you are helping his / her blog!

2. Good comments are thought provoking

When you leave comments that add to the discussion, or comments that counter the view of the blogger, it prompts the blogger to think more about the topic.

He / she may or may not agree with what you say, but it always prompts them to think deeper. And since you provoke the though, they are more likely to remember you and link back to you – especially if they write a follow-up post based on this!

3. Regular, quality comments create high recall value

When another blogger sees your name regularly in the comments section, with contents that add to the discussion in a meaningful way, your name would have a high recall value in the mind of the blogger.

And remember, you might need to write to the blogger asking for a backlink to your blog. In this case, it would help tremendously if your name is familiar to the blogger.

After all, it would be difficult to say no to a loyal reader and a regular contributor!

The other side – Spammy comments

All this doesn’t mean that mere commenting would earn you backlinks. Remember, your comments need to add to the discussion in some way. The comments have to be relevant and meaningful.

There is no point in commenting for the sake of commenting – leaving a spammy comment like “Great post!” wouldn’t help at all.

In fact, it would do the opposite – it would make the blogger remember you as a comment spammer, which is best avoided!

Therefore, do leave comments, but only when you have something meaningful to say.

Conclusion

Leaving meaningful comments regularly increases your familiarity, which is like brand building for you.

And if the comments are really though provoking, the blogger is very highly likely to link to you in future posts.

Bottomline: Leave good comments, and earn backlinks!

Note: Leaving comments can get you more backlinks, and more traffic too! Check out “Leaving comments: Get multiple backlinks, get traffic, build your brand” for more on this.

Related posts:

1. Leaving comments: Get multiple backlinks, get traffic, build your brand
2. Boost your SEO efforts – Have keywords in the link Anchor Text
3. Generate links to your blog through WordPress and Blogspot

When a visitor sent to your blog or website by a search engine bounces, it means that he did not find what he was looking for at your blog or website.

The search engine views this as a vote against your site, and pushes your blog or website down on its SERPs!

(Check out “Reduce the bounce rate, improve your SEO” for more details on this)

How to reduce the bounce rate

There are a few simple things that you can do in order to reduce the bounce rate.

The question that needs to be asked is: Why do visitors bounce? It can be because: 

1. They did not find what they were looking for
2. They found what they were looking for, but still didn’t see any other page or post

Well, there isn’t much you can do for the first. At times, your blog or website can come up in the SERPs for irrelevant searches.

(For example, my post “Keyword density – What is right, what is wrong” often comes up in the SERPs for the search term “What is right what is wrong”. Now clearly, this post is irrelevant for the people searching for this term – and they mostly bounce)

But there are some things you can do for the second category of people.

1. Have meaningful internal linking of posts

The idea here is to have various means of highlighting the content of your blog to the visitors.

Maybe you can have a list of related posts at the bottom of each post, or you can have a “people who liked this post also liked” type of list.

This way, your readers would come to know about other content of your blog or website without having to search for it.

This would increase the chances of them reading more than just one post or page on your site, and therefore, decrease your bounce rate.

To know more about different ways of highlighting your content, please read “7 ways to implement internal linking of your posts for better SEO“.

2. Have a welcome message for visitors

Now this is a little extra that you can have for your search engine visitors.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could present a customized message to the visitors from search engines, and highlight your best posts there?

The good news is that you can! You can show a message specifically to search engine visitors, and list your best posts there. Or, you can list posts that are relevant to the search terms used by the visitor!

There are many plugins available for this for various blogging platforms.

What not to do to reduce the bounce rate

We saw the ways of reducing the bounce rate – using these techniques, you can decrease the bounce rate meaningfully.

However, many people try to reduce the bounce rate artificially. Some examples: 

• “Click for more” or “Read more” links (on pages other than archive pages)
• Posts broken into multiple pages, each page containing just a few paragraphs

If at all, these methods would artificially decrease your bounce rate. However, it is more likely that visitors would get annoyed by this, and would never come back!

My advise – stay away from these, and employ only genuine ways of reducing your bounce rate.

Related posts:

1. Reduce the bounce rate, improve the SEO
2. Improve SEO of your blog by linking blog posts internally
3. 7 ways to implement internal linking of your posts for better SEO

When a visitor comes to your blog or website, either on the homepage or on some post, and leaves without seeing any other webpage, it is called a “bounce“.

In other words, a “bounce” is a visitor that leaves after seeing only one webpage on your blog or website.

And the percentage of people “bouncing” off your site is the bounce rate.

Bounce rate = Number of visitors seeing just one page * 100 / Total number of visitors

A visitor sent by a search engine bounces…

When a visitor bounces, he or she can either be hitting the “back” button, or can type another URL in the address bar and move on to that website.

Visitors coming from search engines and bouncing off by hitting the “back” button is something that you should be concerned about.

This is because search engines like Google have started noting such behavior. When your visitors do this, search engines notice that they sent you a visitor, but the visitor bounced and came back to the search engine to look for more results.

And how a search engine interprets it – Impact on SEO

This implies that this visitor did not find what he was looking for at your blog or website. In other words, it means that the visitor has voted negatively for your site.

What does this indicate to an intelligent search engine like Google? That your blog or website is not very relevant for the search term that the visitor used!

And guess how the search engine would react? It would push your blog or website down on its SERPs for that search term! Now this is SEO disaster.

How to remedy this?

Of course, bounce rate is only one of the many factors that search engines consider.

However, with SEO, little things add up. So, the only option for you is to reduce your bounce rate.

To know the different ways of reducing the bounce rate, please read “How to reduce bounce rate on your blog and improve SEO“.

Related posts:

1. How to reduce bounce rate on your blog and improve SEO
2. How to improve SEO by reducing your page load time
3. How the page load time of your blog or website impacts SEO