“What are the first steps to optimizing my blog for searches?” - question submitted by @monedays using the #pbquestions hashtag on Twitter.

Much has been written on the topic of search engine optimization for bloggers - but let me give you a few basic first steps:

1. Content is King

The quality of the posts you write is the single most important factor when it comes to Search Optimization on a Blog. I suspect others will argue differently but as I look at my own blogs success in the search engines I’d say that this has been the number one factor.

Quality content that helps people will quite often draw a reader to want to share what they’ve written - of course they do this by passing on the link to your post and often they’ll do it in a way that helps your search rankings (on their own blog for example).

2. Anticipate What People Will be Searching For

Every time you write a post you should be automatically be considering what words people might be putting into search engines to find that type of information. Once you know what kinds of words they’re using you’re in a great position to position yourself for that search.

3. Titles Titles Titles

There are a number of things to keep in mind when it comes to titles. Google pays particular attention to titles - so make sure you get them right:

• first make sure that the way you set your blog up puts the title of your post in the ‘title tags’ on the back end of your blog. This is really important.
• if you’re just looking from an SEO perspective don’t include your blog name in the title tags of single posts. This dilutes your keywords. Of course if you’re looking more at branding including your blog’s name in the title tags might be worth doing.
• next - include the keywords that you identified in point #2 in your post title
• also, keep in mind that the words you use at the start of a title tend to carry more weight than words you use later in your title

4. Keywords in other parts of your post

Use the keywords you identified in point #2 within your post also. If you want Google to rank you for a term or phrase you need to use that term or phrase. Use it in sub headings in your post (use h tags where you can), use it in the content itself, use the words in the alt tags of images etc. Don’t go over the topic but do use the words where you can naturally in the post.

5. Link to Your Own Posts

Don’t over do this one but while links from other sites are a great way to increase your blog’s rankings so are links from your blog. Interlink your posts to share where readers can find more information on your topic (where relevant) but also consider linking to key posts on your blog from other places on the blog (sidebar, front page etc).

6. Links from Outside Your Blog

Links from other sites to yours are key in SEO but they can be hard to get. Start to linking to your blog from other sites that you have or are active on. Some (like on Twitter) won’t count for anything much as they have no-follow tags but they are all potential ways for people to access your site and some will help with SEO.

Don’t become obsessed with getting links - rather become obsessed about writing great content and the links will generally come in time. However if you’ve written a great post that you think will be relevant to another blog don’t be afraid to let that blogger or website owner know about it - they could just link up.

Also - take note of the type of posts that you write that do well at getting other sites to link to you. You can learn a lot about generating linkable content by doing so and might just develop a technique that will work again and again.

7. Plugins

I don’t tend to do much to the back end of my blog to alter things like meta tags - but there are some good plugins around if you’re using WordPress that can help with some of this and that may give you a small edge. Check out 9 SEO plugins that every WordPress Blog Should have for some suggestions on this.

8. Readers Begat Readers

This isn’t an SEO technique as such but it plays a part. The more readers you have the more likely your blog is to be found by other readers. There’s a certain ’snowballing’ thing that happens on a site over time - as you get readers quite often momentum grows as those readers pass on your site to others in their network. They link to you, they bookmark you, they tweet about you, they email friends about you, they blog about you, they suggest your site in recommendation engines….

Not all of this counts with SEO but some does and the accumulation of it over time all certainly helps to grow both organic and search traffic. I guess what I’m saying is to get readers any way you can - don’t just focus upon ‘SEO’ as such. It all counts.

My Hunch with SEO

Before I share my hunch…. let me say that I’m not an SEO and this could be completely wrong…. but it’s a hunch that I’ve had for a while now.

I’ve been doing this blogging thing for almost 7 years now and from what I can see the tweaks that many bloggers do on their blogs to optimize it seem to be having less and less impact on the rankings of blogs. Don’t get me wrong - I stand by the above tips completely and would do them as a common sense bare minimum - but from where I sit Google seem to be in the business of finding the best information that they can for their users. They don’t always get it right but I think they do a pretty good job.

As a blogger your job should be to provide the best information that you can.

It strikes me that Google have an ever increasing way of working out if your information is good. It’s not just about what keywords you have or how many links that you get - but these days they own Feedburner (know how many people subscribe to your blog and what links people are clicking on), they own Google Reader (again giving them all kinds of great data), they own Gmail, Google Analytics, YouTube etc…..

Now they may or may not use all the data in their ranking of sites but they certainly could know a lot about your blog and the posts you write. There’s also been increasing talk over the last 6 months or so about how easy it’d be for search engines to start generating data on what content is being shared in social networks and bookmarking sites.

My hunch is that many traditional SEO methods are less important (NOT irrelevant though) and that other factors are increasingly going to come into play. I’m sure that some will work out ways to manipulate this (SEO 2.0?) but increasingly the way to get ranked high in Google will be that you just need to keep producing great content and making sure that it’s sneezed out to your network.

Help this process along by giving your readers way to share your content (and seed it to social networks) as well as to become subscribers.

Mike Dobbs is the group director of SEO at 360i, a digital marketing agency that drives results for premier brands. The agency recently released the Social Marketing Playbook, a guide for brands. You can follow 360i on Twitter.

With all the rumors suggesting that Google will soon offer real-time search capabilities, indexing Tweets and other real-time web data, now is a good time to take a closer look at your Twitter presence. Even now, what you tweet can be held against you on the engines, although it can also work to your advantage.

As an example, Google is already indexing tweets (albeit not in real-time) so Twitter pages and even individual tweets have already started appearing within Google search results.

[Mashable’s Twitter page appears in a search query on Google.]

[Tweets are even appearing on the first page of Google for non-brand searches, like in this example for the query “pac man tweet.”]

But, never fear, you still have time to start optimizing your Twitter presence before your random tweets about what you ate for lunch start appearing in searches for your name. By following these ten Twitter tips, you, your company or your brand can build up more prominent links in high places on the engines.

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1. Choose a good handle

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Be sure to pick an optimal handle that’s relevant to your brand or campaign and easy to remember. Your handle (also known as your Username) then becomes part of your customized Twitter URL such as twitter.com/yoursite or twitter.com/yourtopic. Doing this creates a static address for future search indexing, which also helps usability for other cross-channel promotions. So choose wisely! The fun challenge: doing all this while keeping your name short and succinct so it’s easily tweetable.

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2. Select an account name wisely

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Optimize the Twitter account name to best reflect your brand. Your name is what appears next to your profile, which can be different than your handle/URL. You obviously want an account name that promotes yourself, your company or your brand. You should also consider which variation of you brand name has the most search frequency every month.

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3. Make your bio count

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Optimize your Twitter page’s “Bio” line so it includes the most important, mission-critical phrases for your brand. Take advantage of all 160 characters! (Yep, that’s right: They give you 20 more characters than a normal tweet.) Your bio is consistently indexed so its contents are what provide your Twitter page with its core relevance.

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4. Spread the word

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Now think about ways to build the link reputation of this newfound social web address. For example, you can integrate your Twitter URL into your website by placing a call to action on the site for your customers to follow you on Twitter. You could also integrate your Twitter URL within your site’s Global Footer, which appears at the bottom of every page of your site. Both of these options offer usability to your site visitors and help drive your Twitter URL up in the search engines.

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5. Remember your URL

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In the account settings, be sure to add your website’s URL or perhaps use it to promote your presence on another social platform, for example, yoursite.com. This is a great way to drive traffic back to your destination of choice; although, truth be told, the link does not provide any offsite reputation – a.k.a. SEO link juice – due to a “Nofollow” attribute that Twitter has in place. (Sorry Twitter spammers!)

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6. Select the initial characters of each tweet carefully

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The “lead-in” of each tweet appears to be important for SEO as it will determine what appears in the tweet’s title tag when it shows up as a search result on Google. Approximately 42 characters are factored into each tweet’s title tag, including the account name, as well as the initial characters of each tweet. Keep in mind that your full tweet and all its characters are still being indexed by major engines, though.

[The first characters of your tweet may have the most impact on its future SEO value.]

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7. Write keyword-rich tweets if possible

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Wherever possible, start your tweet with a primary keyword phrase to theme each message. Take advantage of any “active lingo” or buzz words as this will enable you to capitalize on timely searches on those terms. Of course, this doesn’t mean you should fill your tweets with buzz words at the expense of providing value to your followers! Rather, think carefully about which word choices will best convey your message and also allow you to leverage the real-time and long-term index relevance across the engines that continuously spider and index tweets.

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8. Mind your retweetability

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Make sure your tweet’s character limits allow for optimal “retweetability.” If you want a message to proliferate on Twitter, it’s ideal to keep it under 120 characters so your followers can easily add RT @YourHandle in front of the tweet. However, the exact number is different from everyone as it depends on the number of characters needed for someone to include the phrase “RT @yourname” in their re-tweet.

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9. Provide some link love

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Insert back links to redirect users back to your content. Twitter has proven to be a significant traffic driver for bloggers and others using the space to share links. If you do share links, use one of the many URL shorteners available (TinyURL and Bit.ly are two common shorteners). We recommend using the URL shortener Bit.ly, as it tracks click-throughs for the specific links you share on the platform. Bit.ly even has the power to track links in aggregate. For example, if multiple Bit.ly URLs were created and shared by separate users, all leading back to the same URL, the service can track and report click-throughs for all of them in aggregate. Bit.ly also tracks clicks over time, so you can see when people are clicking your links most.

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10. As always, give ‘em what they want

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When providing Bit.ly links or any other URLs, make sure the redirection leads to pages which provide a richer content experience. Twitter users are hungry for information and accustomed to getting it “right now.” Send users directly to the details instead of having them fish around for it.

Mike Dobbs is the group director of SEO at 360i, a digital marketing agency that drives results for premier brands through insights, ideas, and technologies. The agency recently released the Social Marketing Playbook, a guide for brands utilizing social media to connect with their customers. You can follow 360i on Twitter.

Google’s creation of sites’ titles and descriptions (or “snippets”) is completely automated and takes into account both the content of a page as well as references to it that appear on the web.

We use a number of different sources for this information, including descriptive information in the META tag for each page. Where this information isn’t available, we may use publicly available information from DMOZ. While accurate meta descriptions can improve clickthrough, they won’t impact your ranking within search results. We frequently prefer to display meta descriptions of pages (when available) because it gives users a clear idea of the URL’s content. This directs them to good results faster and reduces the click-and-backtrack behavior that frustrates visitors and inflates web traffic metrics.

While we’re unable to manually change titles or snippets for individual sites, we’re always working to make them as relevant as possible. You can help improve the quality of the snippets displayed for your pages by providing informative meta descriptions for each page.

Read more about changing your site’s title and description here.

Today I received what seemed like a fairly generic email from the website Dummies.com. I won’t republish the email (I’m not into that) but it was a fairly generic ‘could you link to our website’ type email asking for a link because they’ve redesigned their site. It even included a suggested link/code.

My reaction was not positive - in fact within a few moments I’d tweeted that I’d had the request and wasn’t overly impressed.

This post is not about Dummies.com - it’s about asking for links.

I have no beef with Dummies - they produce some great books by some amazing authors. This post isn’t about them. It’s about asking for links.

You see I get quite a few emails asking for links like the one from Dummies but they’re not always from big well known brands, they’re more often than not emails from bloggers. In 99% of cases the email ends up in my trash folder in Gmail but occasionally I not only read the emails but I link to the persons site.

Why do some emails generate links and others don’t?

Following are 11 suggestions for those wanting to email a blogger to ask for a link (whether they be big brands or bloggers):

1. Write something worth linking to - this is a no brainer but so many people don’t get it. In the same way you wouldn’t successfully pitch a TV news service or newspaper a story like ‘I’ve got a newly designed website - it’s got videos’ you’re not likely to get much success with a blogger. The best way to get the attention of a blogger is to write something useful, entertaining, controversial, helpful, informative, intriguing…. etc. Check out my series on LinkBaiting for more ideas on this (particularly the post 20 Link Baiting Techniques).
2. Suggest a Link to a post not your site - don’t ask for a link to your site - suggest that they check out a link to an individual page or post that you’ve written. A blogger is much more likely to run with a story linking to a post about a specific topic relevant to their topic than adding a link to your site.
3. Develop a Relationship - cold calling a blogger that you’ve never interacted with before asking for a link is not the best way to start off a relationship. It’s like in real life - would you walk up to a stranger and immediately start asking them for favors? Get to know the blogger, their blog and let the ‘favors’ emerge out of that.
4. Demonstrate Knowledge of the Blog and Blogger - building upon the ‘relational’ aspect - use the blogger’s name, show that you know what their blog is about. You don’t need to write an epic introduction that proves your knowledge - but a polite and not overly familiar approach can do you wonders. Also - introduce yourself to the blogger you are pitching to. You might feel like you know them but they could be in contact with many people - a quick reminder of who you are and what you do could help.
5. Research - sometimes it can be worthwhile doing 5 minutes of research before you email another blogger. Look back over their last few months of blogging. What is their topic? Do they link to other blogs? What kinds of sites/posts/topics do they link to? Do they interact in other mediums (ie perhaps Twitter could be a better place to contact them)? The more information you gather the more able you are to tailor your pitch to them appropriately.
6. Add Value - a blogger is unlikely to link to you unless there’s something in it for them or their blog. I’m not talking exchanging of money or even reciprocal links when I talk about value (although for some bloggers those will be motivating factors) - I mean the page you’re asking for a link for should be something of value that will actually enhance their blog. I can only speak for myself but I know that if someone pitches me a link that I’ll link to it or at least tweet the link in a heart beat if I think it adds value to the lives of my readers or followers.
7. Stay on topic - this really is an extension of a couple of the points above but it always amazes me how many emails I get for people asking me to link to their ‘golf’, ’stock market’, ‘book review’ and ‘kids fashion’ sites (they were just 4 requests that I got today alone). If you’re pitching a blogger to link to something you wrote make sure that the blog you want to appear on has relevancy to your topic. For starters it increases the chances of a link, it increases the chances of a reader clicking the link and it increases the power of the search engine juice that you’ll get from the link.
8. Be selective in what you promote - we all like to think that every post we write is worthy of links from thousands of other blogs but the reality is that some are more likely to be linked to than others. Pick your very best posts to promote in this way and keep your requests to a minimum.
9. Reciprocate - I want to be clear here that I’m not talking about reciprocal links. ‘Link to me and I’ll link to you’ doesn’t really hold a lot of value in SEO any more from what I can see. What I am talking about here is being willing to be generous TO the blogger and not just expecting them to be generous to you. Shane Gibson described these emails on Twitter yesterday as “we Win you Lose invitations” - I think that sums it up nicely. See the relationship as being like a bank. You’ve got to put in to get something out. If you take too much out the relationship will be bankrupt. I’m not just talking about giving the blogger links - you can reciprocate in many ways including by writing them guest posts, sending them small gifts, sponsoring a project that they’re running, promoting them to your own network…. etc
10. Build on the Experience - no matter what the bloggers response is - you can learn from and build upon the experience. If they do link then there may be opportunity to deepen the relationship in some way. If they respond angrily, you probably don’t want to send them links again. If you get silence, don’t take it personally and continue to find ways to build relationships with the blogger.
11. Be Link Worthy - let me emphasize this again. The best way to get linked to by a blogger is to produce a page or post that is link worthy of the link.