by Natalia Jones

Created on: June 14, 2010

All bloggers worth their salt understand that mastering SEO techniques can mean the difference between success and failure simply because SEO is the language of search engines. It follows then that for your blog to be found it must be fluent in SEO. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done but there are a few mistakes that have the potential to seriously harm your search engine results that can be easily avoided.

Ignoring Meta-Tag Descriptions or Using them Incorrectly

A meta tag description is the blogger’s chance to tell the search engine what the page or blog post is about. It is different from a summary or post snapshot because this is ideally not written for human understanding. While it should not be crammed with repetitious keywords, it should be unique to a summary of the post that may be used in a feed reader for instance.

Not Optimizing Your Permalinks

Permalinks are the section of a blog post’s URL that relates specifically to the content or page. A blog post may be uniquely identified by a number or by a category word followed by a number, but arguably the best use of the permalink is to put in keywords that help the post to be found by search engines. For instance, this article’s URL should have a portion of the title as its full address.

Failing to Install Plugins that Make SEO Easier

Rather than work on your SEO techniques manually it is advisable to download and install plugins that can help do some or all of the work for you. Advancements in blogging technology now make it easy to install a program that can identify keywords based on an analysis of the content and then fill in the meta tags and other SEO spots appropriately.

Using Blog Titles that are Not Keyword Focused

A blog post title is extremely important to the success of the content. This is because a title not only attracts human readers but also automated crawlers sent out by search engines. When these crawlers can pick up on focused keywords in a title of a blog post it helps to bring that post closer to the top of the pile in a search result.

Perfecting your SEO technique is an integral part of becoming an A-list blogger. Poor SEO techniques can really hurt a blog’s progress and it may go largely unnoticed because this involves acquired knowledge and proper application that is difficult to spot unless the blogger is aware of what needs to be done in the first place.

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