High search-engine rankings affect users’ perceived credibility of a website.

Great content lost by search engines often goes unrecognized, as users typically rely on Google, Bing, and others to organize and provide informative results. As a beginning blogger, it is imperative to implement the best Web practices to gain traffic through search-engine optimization.

SEO for Beginners

1. Organically gain traffic and social shares

Social shares may not seem to have a direct impact on SEO, but they are a great source for bloggers looking to organically engage with their audience. As a blogger develops his or her brand and experiences audience growth, such a strategy will enhance SEO by means of source credibility and links.

As Moz explains in The Beginner’s Guide to SEO:

The years 2011-2012 saw a huge rise in social sharing and its effects on search. Google, in particular, began to incorporate a huge number of social signals into its search results. This involves serving personalized results to logged-in users that include content shared by the searcher’s social circle (Facebook, Twitter and others). Normally, these results might not appear in the top ten, but are promoted because of this social influence.

2. Make use of internal links

Search Engine Land has a good resource on internal linking in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To Internal Linking Strategy.” Writer Erin Everhart urges bloggers and webmasters alike to think logically about internal linking. Consider user experience, and rather than linking each page back to the homepage or the “about” page, link to the most related pages on the site. When posting an article, bloggers should make use of internal linking only when links are relevant to the article topic.

3. Name uploaded images

Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide makes it clear that naming images will help to optimize results. When uploading an image, think of the filename as a title. Appropriately-titled images will appear better in search results.

4. Make use of “alt” tags

“Alt” tags are image descriptions that are written into the HTML code.  The text in the “alt” tags do not appear to users unless the image is having trouble loading, or if the user has images turned off. Such tags are also helpful for visually impaired users.

They may seem insignificant to a beginner blogger, but they are important to SEO. Google does not recognize images as humans see them, so it is important to provide this information for search engines. Google Webmasters have given advice on the best way to make use of image titles and alt tags:

Not so good:
<img src=”puppy.jpg” alt=””>

Better:
<img src=”puppy.jpg” alt=”puppy”>

Best:
<img src=”puppy.jpg” alt=”Dalmatian puppy playing fetch”>

5. Use caution with guest blogging

In the past, guest blogging has been a successful way to organically increase traffic to a website, but this method has historically been abused. Therefore, search engines now look at guest blogging with skepticism. Matt Cutts, head of the webspam team at Google, warns against inappropriate use of guest blogging in the following video:

Utilize these five strategies as a start for SEO. How do they compare with other tips you’ve heard?

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