First off, I’d like to thank reader Consolidation School Loan for giving me this idea, because it really is rather timely.

We’ve talked at length here about capturing attention, and Consolidated School Loan finally broke down and basically asked which one is the most important?

The simple answer is neither.  But when in doubt, err on the side of your readers.

See, the whole reason to appeal to search engines is to GET you readers.  If, in the beginning, the search engines aren’t happy with you you’re not likely to get very far.  But once the search engines start bringing in readers, that come back regularly, well, then there’s not much point to the search engines any more, is there?

Search engines don’t buy your merch.  Search engines don’t click ads or leave comments. All a search engine does is BRING READERS, that in turn, do all those things.

Search engines take territory, to misquote the military parlance, but readers hold it.

So if you MUST decide between the two, choose readers.  Do what you can to keep the search engines happy, because they bring more readers.  But don’t sacrifice your readers’ happiness for the search engines. What does it profit me if I have the highest-ranked blog on Google, but spend all my time screaming keywords and racial epithets?  Who’ll stick around and read THAT?

Don’t ignore the search engines.  That’s a move you make at your own peril.  But neglecting the search engines a bit in favor of your readers, a sixty-forty split, say, will not go unrewarded.

Bear with me, experienced folk in the audience.  This one’s specifically for the new guys (and gals, if you want to be precise in the language) today.

I know you veterans out there understand the idea of submitting your blog to search engines and giving yourselves that extra push in building traffic.  I know you’re well aware of how important it is to do that, and how it can not only give you traffic spikes but also improve your rankings, help you get links and trackbacks, and help you push your bottom line up as well as give you a source of steady reliable readership.  I know that.

That’s why I’m apologizing to you up front.  See, it’s not just the veterans that come here.  We’ve also got the next generation of bloggers looking for tips and advice, so this one is just for them today.  You know I give you plenty of good advice too…so today, let’s just spare a thought for the folks just getting started.

And in case you need it, here are some links to where to submit your blog to search engines.

Google

Yahoo

Technorati

MSN Live Search

The Open Directory

There are generally two schools of thought when it comes to making a headline for each of your blog posts.  One, you can make your headline catch attention and draw interest to the post itself.  Two, you can make a search-engine friendly headline that contains key words.

Or, you can tell both of these schools you’re not enrolling and instead do BOTH at once.

See, with keywords in your posts, you’ll draw the search engines in but your readers won’t be as engaged.  A post titled “The Oreck XL 350″ really doesn’t get the interest the way “This Vacuum Cleaner Really Sucks” does.  The other way around switches the terms–no search engine is going to return a lot of hits for “So, Guess Who Got Engaged?” even though your readers will likely be scrolling down just to see what the answer is.

One good way to split this difference is to do both at once.  For instance, in the above examples, you can split the difference by trying:

“The Oreck XL 350: A Vacuum Cleaner That Really Sucks”.

or

“So, Guess Who’s Getting Engaged?  Hint: It’s Not Gerard Butler.”

Now what you’ve done is added both a keyword to bait the search engines and an interesting aside for your readers.

Your readers are valuable, but you always need more of them.  So don’t forget to work both sides of the fence, whether by expanding your headlines or by varying the style.

Linkbait topics are well known for driving traffic and increasing sites that link to your blog. The challenge is finding compelling content for these types of posts on a regular basis. I am sure you have regular blogs that you look to for content, these sites might provide some additional material and ways for you to create better linkbait posts.

1. Google Trends - These are the topics that are being searched most on Google, so obviously people are looking for websites with these terms, put one of the top terms into your post, make sure you keyword it and you will be on the list.

2. Twitter - Twitter top trends are another rich source of trending topics that are being searched, written about and commented on. The good thing about this is, having found your topic and written about it, you can contribute to the buzz by tweeting a link to your post.

3. Yahoo Buzz - This is a list of top news stories, so less about what people are searching for and more a list of what people have found interesting and have “buzzed”. Again a useful list but it is probably more useful if you are blogging about newsworthy events.

Where do you go for trending topics ?

I’m sure no one needs convincing of the benefits of adding Google analytics to their blog, but adding it for every page can be time consuming.

For those bloggers using Wordpress there is a plugin that will do it all for you. Called Google Analytics for Wordpress its primary function is to ensure that each page on your blog has the right code for Google Analytics to work.

In addition it also tracks outgoing links, downloads, Adsense clicks, image search keywords.  It also allows you to add additional search engines. This feature is especially useful if your blog is location based and you want to ensure that your local search engines are picking your blog and sending you traffic.

All-in-all a very useful plugin to use.

Most sites today if they want to have success need to attract as many good and relevant back links as possible. On all my sites I actively monitor and pursue as many good back links as humanly possible. One of the main reasons I brought Slysvisions.com from the great not yet but nearly retired Sly Blanco, was because of the massive amount of quality backlinks he had accumulated in just one year, the guy did everything I would of done but better, 17000 plus links in google is one hell of a effort.

First of all Good quality and interesting blog post are going to attract the good back links no matter what, but don’t just rely on this alone, go out and actively start building goodlinks for your site, its important! I have compiled a list of what I do every day for my sites:

1. Writing great post like I said, this is not as easy as you make think, It’s hard to write to write good post that would attract backlinks from a fellow blogger. I’m sure this is skill that needs to be learnt over time and doing it day in day out is almost impossible (Well for me anyway).
2. Find great blogs which are your source and link to them and send them a trackback ping, trackbacks can be a awesome back link. Make sure you find a blog that accepts trackbacks and make sure the site is closely related to yours.
3. Great links from really old and well established good content sites and forums are always good as well, never go to a link farm or some crappy site, pick carefully but again remember relevance.
4. Bloggroll link swapping is a great idea, but yes again only swap with good relavant content sites that blog regulary.
5. Inlinks if you have a few sites, like I do make sure you link to each others stories every day. As well as the extra traffic, its a good link and it all adds up in the end.
6. Social Media networks and Blog Directories are can be good as well, but many cover alot of topics and relevance is not as strong, but still do it.
7. Finally I’m sure there are more ways I have not listed that you might know so try them.

I’m no expert but I believe that you have to do everything you can possibly think of to make your blog a success and backlink building will be a key feature in your blog business. Don’t just rely on one backlink building method, try a few, some or all of the above methods and remember, yes I’ll say it one more time “Relevance” is the key.

As an internet marketer who does a lot of work with websites and marketing, I know how much work I need to put in to SEO if I want to constantly get search traffic. SEO is a big part of managing a website because everyone knows the power of search engines. If you never ever promoted your site or bought ads on other sites, you can at least get traffic from search engines right?

With all the SEO blogs out there, it’s just hard to keep up. But fortunately for me, James Harrison from JameSEO asked me to review his blog. It was then that I discovered another undiscovered blog that has a lot of hidden treasures.

Who Is James?

My name is James Harrison. I’m an internet marketer working full-time for MEA Digital in downtown San Diego. I work as an Online Media Specialist in the Pay Per Click department and love every minute of it.

I truly enjoy working on the internet, especially in the field of search engine marketing.

During the day, I manage pay-per-click campaigns on Google, Yahoo, MSN, Business.com and other 2nd-tier PPC interfaces.

But, during the night I’m a SEO working on personal websites and studying new search engine optimization strategies. 

As you can see, James is the real deal. He works for an interactive agency as web SEO. This guy knows his stuff.

According to James about page, his blog has two simple purposes: 1) it’s the place where he records all his SEO marketing notes, and 2) he wants to rank #1 for the search term “James Harrison” (his name). The first purpose is understandable, but the second? JameSEO.com as #1 for the term “James Harrison”? Last time I checked, he’s only 7 spots behind from news stories of the NFL player James Harrison! With over 1,000,000 search results and claiming the #7 spot, he truly is doing something right.

The Design

So now let’s talk about the blog and its design.

To be honest with you, I don’t really like the design. I think that it’s one of the things that would repel readers away, or keep them from coming back. My simple advice to James is this: try out different themes and see how they go. You might have picked this one because of its simplicity, but there are other good ones out there that are really nice looking. Just get rid of this one.

The sidebar, meanwhile, has too much stuff going on especially the section with all the little buttons. I’m sure that you might need them because they’re required to be put on the blog somewhere, but try to keep the only ones that are necessary. The SiteMeter button, for example, can be placed in the footer while the Yahoo “Links to This Site” can be completely removed. There’s too much stuff going on and you need to fix them.

SEO Tips and Tricks

Now let’s get to the treasures within the blog. What I like about the articles that James writes is that he actually walks you through each and every one of them. He also adds in images that complements what he talks about.

Anyway, below are 5 great articles from JameSEO that I’ve read. You NEED to read them because I promise you, almost all of them will be new to you.

• 13 Search Operators for Ultimate Link Building
• Keyword Placement: Thinking of Places to Place Your keywords
• A Few Backlink Factors I Tend to Think About
• Link Tunneling Explained - Link Building SEO
• Onpage SEO: Title Tags Change Search Engine Rankings

Other than the great articles that James writes, he also composed a lists of tools and resources for SEO, so make sure to check them out.

The Sly Guy Recommendation

James clearly is an expert on the topic of SEO. If you own a static website or a blog, then you must check out JameSEO and subscribe. As JameSEO grows, it will just keep on getting better with more and more SEO tips and tricks. James will eventually get a new and better design (preferably a premium theme) that will compliment with the great content that he writes. So go ahead, visit JameSEO!