When you first create a blog and start posting to the world it can be very frustrating that nobody ever visits it!

Because there are now billions of websites and blogs competing for attention it can be quite a challenge to make your blog visible. To get your blog noticed by your ideal visitor, first you have to get it noticed by the search engines.

The leading driver of web traffic is the search engine Google and so you need to please Google. The other major search engines, Yahoo and Bing, tend to copy Google so if you please one you please them all.

Now, actually only a few people in the world (and they are the high powered Google executives) really know how Google’s search engine decides to rate and rank blogs but, for the rest of us, here are a few pointers that definitely help to get your blog noticed.

It all really starts with keywords.  When you first have an idea for a blog you need to visualise your target audience and to ask yourself the question ‘what does my ideal visitor type into Google search that would ideally lead them to my blog?’ For example, if your blog was all about ice skating techniques, your ideal visitor might type in the keyword ‘how do i learn to skate’.  If that’s the sort of person you want to attract to your blog you want to set up your blog like this:

• Your domain name should be descriptive and should convey to Google just what your blog is about. In our example, ‘iceskatingtechniques.com’ would be a good and better domain than ‘iceskating.com’, which is probably too general and would have more competition.
• Your blog title should be explicit and should contain your keyword. This is the text that appears when the search results are displayed and so it should be phrased to attract the visitor to click on to the home page of your blog. ‘Ice Skating Techniques – Learn How To Skate Like A Star!’ would be a good title.
• You should have regular blog posts with titles like ‘How Do I Learn To Skate?’ and ‘Learn Skating’ and ‘Advanced Ice Skating Tips’ – all the phrases that a rookie skater (and your ideal visitor) would type into Google search.

That’s just the start. Then you’ve got to get inbound links to your blog. If other websites or blogs contain a link to your blog with the keywords ‘How Do I Learn To Skate?’ and ‘Learn Skating’ and ‘Advanced Ice Skating Tips’, pointing to your appropriate post, then Google treats that as a recommendation and begins to take notice.

I’ll deal with the question of getting inbound links next week. Stay tuned!