One of the fundamentals of blog SEO is gaining quality inbound links. Inbound links may not be all that hard to get particularly if you use article marketing and social networking. The hard part is getting the ‘quality’ inbound links.

There are many arguments as to the worth of link swapping, or link exchanging. The consensus of most in the industry is that, whilst they may deliver extra traffic, when it comes to blog SEO and rankings they have little value - if the search engines determine they have been exchanged.

The problem with link exchanges is that your link often get placed either in a sidebar or buried on a page away from the front page. For blog SEO purposes, this is pretty useless. Quality links are those that appear in content, in context, with appropriate anchor text. That is a lot to ask from someone.

If you frequent any of the social bookmarking or social networking sites then it pays to really socialize. If you can build some ‘close’ relationships on these communities you can do as many others do, create mutually beneficial link exchanges - inside content with appropriate anchor text pointing to individual posts - the cream of links.

When you around the blog world you will start to notice that certain blogs seem to link to other blogs on a regular basis. These loose partnerships are developed over time but as part of your blog SEO strategy, they are very effective. A slight word of caution. Networking should be for the overall purpose of networking, not just personal gain - give as much as you receive - if not more.

Blog plugins help to extend the functionality of your blog and for users of WordPress, the range of plugins is endless - or at least it seems that way.

The home for WordPress blog plugins is WordPress.org where you can find over 2000 plugins covering an extremely wide range of functions. If you are looking for a blog plugin to do a particular job then enter the function into the search window - you will often be surprised at the results.

The top five plugins at present are - in order of popularity:

1. All in One SEO Pack
2. Google XML Sitemaps
3. Akismet
4. WordPress.com Stats
5. NextGEN Gallery

All in One SEO Pack and Google XML Sitemaps have each been downloaded in excess of 300,000 times and are extremely popular.

As a plugin site it is obviously popular with over 4 million downloads. The site holds the official WordPress blog plugin database and is used by almost all WordPress users to update their current plugins. If you need a blog plugin - check out the official site first.

It hasn’t quite hit the streets yet however Feedburner is starting to roll out Adsense for feeds for those publishers who use the Feedburner service to distribute their RSS feeds.

As theses ads are rolled out you can expect to see the ‘ads by Google’ alongside contextually targeted ads.  To quote from the Feedburner blog:

For publishers who are not yet placing ads in their feeds, any publisher who meets the requirements to join the AdSense program will also be able to use AdSense for feeds. You will be able to manage your feed ad units directly from AdSense Setup tab, and track performance right on the AdSense Report tab. You can slice, dice, mix, or mash your tracking across feed units and content units, or keep them totally separate. You’re in control. You can still control the frequency and rules around when ads appear in your feeds, without having to mess with templates on your content management system.

If you use Feedburner and want to monetize your feeds then that options is just around the corner. Keep your eyes on the Feedburner blog site where I am sure they will shouting the news once it’s ready to roll.

The use of social bookmarking sites has quickly become a popular way of increasing traffic to one’s site.  Sometimes the traffic is not all what it seems. StumbleUpon is a good example. Someone ’stumbles’ your post and before you know it you have a huge spike in your traffic. When you check your stats, there is also a huge spike in your bounce rate.

There are many people that sneer at social bookmarking and claim the time spent ’socializing’ could be better spent elsewhere. For these individuals I fear the magic of social bookmarking has escaped them.

When undertaking a social bookmarking campaign, the last thing that should be on your mind is traffic. I agree that in many cases the traffic delivered is fleeting, stopping for seconds before deciding to move on. With the StumbleUpon system I compare it to a magazine. You flick through a magazine stopping at articles that interest you; flicking past those that don’t.  Likewise, you flick through blogs, stopping at posts that interesting you; moving on if they don’t.

That is not the magic. The magic that social bookmarking delivers is the link from the bookmarking site to your post. That link can be multiplied by the name of bookmarks or votes that your site receives. Every time your post is bookmarked, that bookmark is saved in the bookmarker’s list of favorite sites.

That is the first piece of magic. The second still concerns links, this time from your visitors.  Traffic from social bookmarking sites is free.  If 1 our 100 stop and read - that is one extra reader you have received. More importantly, if any of these visitors link to your post, that is a another one way inbound link received.

The time invested in social bookmarking is almost impossible to measure in outcomes. You will never know if the next link comes from a visitor through a social bookmarking site, or from search engine listing. The fact you have another inbound link is what is important. There is definitely more to social bookmarking than just traffic.

Metrics is the measure of something. Blog metrics is the measurement of something on your blog.  Do you measure the length of stay on your blog?

Knowing how long your visitors stay is a good indication of how well you are doing, whether or not or you are writing posts that hold your visitors interests and whether or not they are moving on to other posts as well. A good blog metrics program will tell you your bounce rate, the average length of stay and the average number of pages visited.

A good blog metrics package will extend that information into how long they spend on each page. Which page your visitor lands on and which page they exit. This is all vital information for serious bloggers. Knowing which posts are popular and which posts fail to interest visitors provides you with the information to control your content.

We all know that content is important; quality content is even more important. Being able to produce content that your visitors find interesting and engaging will lead to repeat visitors. If you know which content fails to engage,you can either spend time analyzing why it fails to engage, or simply avoid using it in the future.

There are many different blog metrics packages available. The simplest lies probably on your server, AW Stats. Whilst not as informative as many others, it will provide you with some data to examine.

Another free blog analytics tool is Google Analytics. This tool does provide more information particularly if you take time to learn how to use it and how to drill down into some of the data.

Knowing what interests your readers is important. It enables you to fine tune your posts so that you can provide more of what they want. A good blog metrics package will help you achieve that.

There are many arguments about which blog software is best, particularly after the last release of  WordPress. However, when you add everything up, WordPress still offers one of the best support networks, official and un-official and has the largest range of templates and plugins of any blog software package.  Not only that:

1. WordPress is  SEO friendly
   With the use of either permalink option or plugins,  you can make the URL the title of the blog - and if the blog title is keyword optimized, so is the URL.  You can also add tags which not only help with blog SEO, they also help with sites such as Technorati. Plugins enable each page to have their own meta tag descriptions.
2. Quick Keyword Rich Content
   If you wrote two posts every day you would have over 700 SEO friendly pages within 12 months. Writing, editing and publishing content is quick and easy and you don’t need to be a computer or internet genius to use the software.
3. Distribution on Auto Pilot
   RSS feeds are a great bonus, however an even bigger bonus is the ability to ‘ping’ your content automatically - the moment it is published. The ‘ping’ send a notification of your new content to as many different sites as you like - simply add their ping details, set and forget. Your content is then automatically distributed.
4. Communication Channels
   If your content is interesting or thought provoking then people will either leave comments or refer to your post in a post of their own. With inbuilt tools such as ‘trackbacks’, you can quickly gain a lot of good links. Blogging itself has developed a community and the communication and discussions that take place on some posts can be as good as forums.

WordPress has become the most used blog software in use at present and the community of users is growing daily. Does it Rock? To the dedicated users - of course it does!

If you find yourself running short of ideas of looking for images to add to your blog content then a new browser tool called ‘Zemanta” may be just what you are looking for.

Zemanta is best described as an intelligent prompt. As you type your blog content, this tool brings up suggested images and links to other content that is related to your current content.  The tool supports Wordpress.com, Blogger.com, Typepad.com, and self-hosted Wordpresses from version 2.0.

The tool is available as add ons for both Firefox and Internet explorer. You can also download server side plugins for WordPress and Moveable Type. The browser add on is  compatible with most of the major bog content platforms.

Having used the tool for a couple of hours I am reasonably impressed. It can be a pain when it slows down to update the information it is trying to provide. Does it make writing your blog content any easier? If you are writing on topics such as blog SEO then I have to say it has been disappointing.  Obviously there is not much in the way of graphics for blog SEO. The links to other articles are to general.

If, however, you are writing about more tangible topics like horses or cars, the image links and content links would be of great use. So to answer the above question, it depends on the topic of your post.  Any tool that helps in the creation of blog content is always going to be welcome.

If your blog is designed to deliver information and provide answers or solutions to problems in a specific field then Yahoo! Answers may be an ideal place to do a little blog marketing.

Yahoo! Answers is one of the places that people goto to ask questions and receive advice. If you are active and can answer questions related to your niche then you may receive a reasonable flow of traffic. You may also gain a reputation for being knowledgeable in that field. After all, that is what blog marketing is all about.

You can do a search on Yahoo! Answers to find questions in a certain category. You are better off looking for questions that are still open and providing a response that answers the question. Don’t spam and don’t fill your answer with keywords or links - it is very counterproductive. The key to successful blog marketing through Yahoo! Answers is being subtle.

Once you have provided an authoritative answer to the question,  you can leave a link in the source box. For best results, try to link to a page that relates to the question and answer - try to avoid just linking to your home page. If a question is asked about  ‘blog marketing through Twitter’ and you have a post on that topic, then link directly to that post.

The biggest danger to using Yahoo! Answers as a blog marketing tool is that you can wind up spending hours answering question after question. It can almost be addictive. The best strategy is to spend 30 minutes each day answering a question or two and then moving on.

Blog marketing can be done in so many places and in so many different ways. It is just a matter of identifying how each site on the net can best be used.

Start Your Own Blogging Business by J.S. McDougall is the perfect book to get started on your blogging efforts. As everyone knows, blogs are the fastest growing phenomena and more people are seeing the value and possible profit one can make by having one. The book will teach you how to choose a topic, create valuable articles and attract thousands of avid readers. By doing this, you will then learn how to generate income from advertisers, promotions, affiliates and more.
Various blogging experts reveal their strategies for successful blogging and allow you to see just how easy it is to pursue this from the comfort of your own home. The book delivers and is not for those looking for padding and fluff. It simply consists of great and useful tips, links and reviews of various blogging services. It is not for those who are proficient in blogging but more so for those just starting out. If you are looking for something more advanced, you may want to look elsewhere. It also includes information on how to promote your blog and keep it fresh through useful tools like RSS feeds and sites such as Technorati.
This book is brought to you by the people at McGraw-Hill – which everyone knows is a reputable company known for bringing the best educational books to the classroom so you can be sure that although a quick read, it contains pertinent information for anybody looking for blogging business info.

Blogs can, over a period of time, run to hundreds or even thousands of pages. These bloging tips will help to maintain your blogs security.

Use the latest version. An obvious tip, however there are many blogs still using outdated software - software that has more holes than a sieve when it comes to security.

Update your plugins. another obvious tip, however I apply one caveat to this tip - wait. When a new update is available  - check to see if it has caused any problems - if everyone seems to be happy, then update.

Change your admin password on a regular basis. Need  I say any more. Passwords can be hacked so change them regularly.

Use security scanning software. There are several plugins (for WordPress) that can help with security issues.  These can take some of the worry out of your daily grind.

Backup - frequently and often. Backup your blog and store the backup off site. If your host has problems, you have a complete backup to reinstall elsewhere if necessary.

Those five tips are obvious and straightforward tips. However you would be surprised at how many bloggers don’t use these practices at all and then wonder what to do when their site get compromised done the track.  Safe guard your blog - work on it.

Traffic from search engines is important and the only way you can get this traffic is by ensuring your blog SEO strategies are effective. For the novice, these blog SEO basics will help to gain that traffic.

• URL Structure
  Getting your keyword into the URL is important. Re-structuring your URL to keep it simple and clean makes it easier for the search engine spiders to index. Where possible, modify the URL to show the title first with the blog name to follow. For WordPress users there are several plugins that can help to modify URL’s
• Page Titles
  Like URL’s, getting keywords into the page title is important. You have two audiences with page titles, the search engine spider and the reader. You need to make your title catchy enough to attract the reader whilst keyword effective for the search engine.
• Duplicate Content
  Avoid duplicate content at all costs. If your posts are entered into more than one category you may find that the spiders index the content twice - or more. Use the robots.txt file to no index possible duplicate areas.
• Meta Tags
  Be sure your Meta Tags are unique for each page where possible. The page title should appear in the Description tag.
• Image Tags
  Ensure that all images have appropriate alt tags. Also see whether or not the images are placed effectively with related text close by.

Whilst these are only basic blog SEO tips, if you optimize with each of them in mind, you will give your blog a great boost in the search rankings. Depending on the blog software you use, there may be plugins or utilities available to help with these tasks.

If you have a website then the smart thing to do is to have a blog associated with your website. If you have a smart blog SEO program the spinoff is that it can aid your websites SEO program.

Blogs have the characteristics that search engines love, fresh content, a site that appears to be growing at a steady rate, keywords that appear with a host of variations and, with appropriate blog SEO strategies, a lot of inbound links.

You add all those characteristics together with smart blog SEO strategies and you have a blog that ranks highly for a variety of keywords. Links from the blog to website can help to boost the websites rankings as well.

For website owners, the benefits are invaluable. A boost in the websites rankings can lead to an increase in organic traffic. A blog with the correct blog SEO program should also rank well and receive its fair share of organic traffic. If the blog is well setup then much of that traffic can be funneled through to the website with hopefully an increase in conversions.

The biggest plus to website owners is the blogs ability to connect with customers and potential customers along with other related websites and blogs. The dialog  that can be established  can lead  to a real boost in brand or product awareness along with the development of an company’s reputation. Clever use of blog SEO along with social marketing and bookmarking can further that exposure.

The more traffic a blog receives, the more traffic that can potentially flow through to a web site. The more exposure a blog can get, the more opportunities there are for inbound links to both the blog and the website. These are all healthy steps to gaining a high position in the SERP’s which is after all the ultimate aim of both website and blog SEO.