Search experts may debate about a lot of things but most of them will agree that the title tag is the most important onpage SEO factor. In fact, in survey done by 37 search experts, the title tag was the number one search ranking factor. It trumped even anchor text and quality of links.

However, I find that many bloggers don’t take the few minutes (or even seconds) it takes to make sure their title tags have relevant keywords.

For example, I checked out some popular blogs from different niches and found these title tags on recent posts that could be optimized better. read more

I thought it would be interesting to find out the top link building tips of the Blog Herald audience. What things would you recommend for getting links?

Here are my top three tips. Feel free to leave a comment with your best tips. read more

In my last post, I gave the second step to finding good long tail keywords: targeting the keywords on your initial keyword list. Here is the third and final step.

• Part 1: Generate an initial keyword list.
• Part 2: Target the keywords.
• Part 3: Check your keyword logs.

Part 3: Check your keyword logs.

After your target keywords, wait a couple days and then check your keyword logs.  You’ll extrapolate that data to find more long tail keywords.  This step is important because your keyword logs provide some of the best data of finding long tail keywords. read more

In my last post, I gave the first step to finding good long tail keywords. Here is the second step.  Also, I’ll talk about part three next Sunday.

• Part 1: Generate an initial keyword list.
• Part 2: Target the keywords.

Part 2: Target the keywords.

Targeting your keywords is a pretty simple process.  But many bloggers make one of these two common mistakes.

First, don’t spam the keyword in your blog post.  Most bloggers don’t seem to have this problem, but it’s worth mentioning just in case.  Google has penalties for keyword spamming.  Also, keyword spam is annoying to your readers.

The second mistake is more common: not being aggressive enough with your targeting.  Yes, I know I just talked about not spamming but some bloggers make the mistake on the other end of the spectrum.  They barely include the keywords in their posts. read more

As promised in my last post, I’ll cover the process of finding good long tail keywords for your blog.  Here is the first part.  Part two will be next Sunday.

Part 1: Generate an initial keyword list.

There are a couple ways to come up with your initial list of keywords.

First, use an SEO tool.  My favorite ones are Google AdWords: Keyword Tool and SEO Book Keyword Tool.  If you’re not too tech savvy, don’t worry.  These tools are easy to use.

Basically, you enter in the name of your blog’s niche and the tool will spit out a bunch of related keywords.  So, let’s pretend I have a sports car blog.  I typed in sports cars in Google’s tool.  Here’s a sample of what came up. read more

For many bloggers, when they first get interested in SEO, they will go after the most competitive keywords first.  A web design blogger will optimize his site to target web design.  A gadget blogger will go after gadgets.  However, this is usually a bad strategy.

Short keywords like web design, gadgets, and social media are very hard to rank for.  For a new site, if you do everything right, it could take months and oftentimes years before you reach the front page of the search results.  And even then, there could be 10 other sites that do SEO better than you, so your site would be left languishing on the second page.

Now you may be happy with a second page or even a third page ranking, but most people don’t visit those pages.  Aaron Wall, a prominent search expert, writes:

There is no award, little traffic, and virtually no value for ranking on page 2 or page 3, even if it is for an exceptionally competitive and high traffic keyword like credit cards.

So, what’s a blogger to do? read more

If I had just one SEO tip to recommend to my fellow bloggers, it would be to write guest posts.

I recommend guest posting because link building is so important in SEO. Many webmasters neglect to build links so you’ll have a competitive advantage if you guest post. And the quantity and quality of your backlinks is the most important factor to ranking well for a wide variety of keywords and the competitive keywords with high search volume.

Sure, you can try other link building methods but these days guest posting gives you the best return for your time.  Here are a couple reasons why. read more

Much of SEO can be hard to implement or time consuming. For example, link building is difficult for many bloggers and many webmasters find keyword research to be a tedious task. If you want a simple yet effective SEO tip that is easy to implement, you can’t go wrong with strategic internal links.

Internal linking is often overlooked by search marketers. Tactics like building links from other sites, keyword research, and anchor text usually take center stage when SEO is discussed. But don’t forget internal linking since it just plain works.

Now it’s not as effective as getting links from other sites, but it’s so easy to do.  Every blogger who wants better rankings should do it.

Here is an example to consider. read more

Ian had a great question in a comment on my previous post. He asked:

How do you judge the balance between lots of people will be looking for that [popular keyword] against there are lots of results for that [popular keyword]?

Using your example, for “nba all star game 2009″ you’d be one of 500,000 results so how do you decide if that’s a worthwhile keyword to use?

There are couple things to consider when picking keywords to target. read more

Hi, welcome to Sunday Morning SEO. This is a new guide about search engine optimisation, or SEO for short. If you want to improve your rankings and increase your search engine traffic, tune in on Sunday mornings. My name is Dee Barizo and I’ve had experience as a full-time search marketer. This morning we’ll look at keyword research.

Keyword research is one of the fundamental activities in SEO. Many bloggers consider this activity to be tedious, but here are two quick and easy ways to find traffic generating keywords for your posts.

To illustrate these methods, let’s pretend you’re a sports blogger. With the NBA All-Star Game coming up in one week, you plan on publishing a couple posts about it this week. You expect a lot of basketball fans to be searching Google for information about the game. Therefore, you want to figure out the keywords that they might use and insert those keywords in your content. read more