by Gordon Hamilton

Created on: November 01, 2010

It is generally known among bloggers that paying all due attention to SEO is essential to the long term success of their blog. The problem lies, however, in the fact that SEO is not an exact science. It is not only the different component parts of quality SEO which cause confusion but the many different ways in which they are interpreted and executed.

In the first instance, SEO mistakes which could be hurting your blog occur at the time of writing your blog posts. The inclusion of key words and phrases within the text of each blog post is the principal SEO consideration at this stage. Although these key words and phrases are important to your blog posts being found and favourably indexed by the search engine spiders, excessive use of them can have a negative influence. In earlier Internet times, bloggers were incorporating so many key words and phrases in to their text that the quality of their posts was suffering. This practice became known as key word spamming and will now be more likely to have the opposite from what was intended effect on SEO.

Outbound linking to relevant sites and blogs around the Web is something else which should be considered when writing blog posts. What many bloggers fail to realise, however, is that these links must always be relevant and that linking to sites on non-related subjects and/or which are blatantly self-promotional will also hurt their blog in terms of SEO. Again, these links should be sensible in number.

Obtaining backlinks to a blog and its individual posts is one of the biggest factors in SEO. This leads to the search engines viewing the blog as being popular with third parties, therefore likely to be valuable in terms of its content. Backlinks are often obtained immediately after a blog post goes live by submitting it to social bookmarking and networking sites. While this is good SEO practice in theory, if the process is taken to extremes and too many links to the same domain are submitted, it can be considered link spamming and sour relations between the blogger and the social media site. Similarly, where links are posted on sites or Internet forums to blog posts which are wholly inappropriate in terms of their subject, search engines will pick up on this and punish the blog accordingly.

Backlinks come in two types. There are reciprocal links and one way links. Reciprocal links are where two bloggers or Webmasters agree to link to one another’s domains to receive mutual traffic exchange. While this is a benefit to some extent, too many arrangements of this type will again be viewed as link spam. As the search engines are aware of the principal reason for mutual links, these type of links are not viewed as favourably as one way links. It is therefore inbound links obtained over a period of time, by those Web content producers wishing to link to them for their quality, which truly provide SEO benefit in this respect.

Learn more about this author, Gordon Hamilton.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.