Most bloggers can always use a refresher course in how to use links and keywords when blogging. To some, this might seem obvious, but I read a great many blogs where these ideas haven't been put into use.
Try the following reminders on utilizing keywords and links to your best advantage:
Turn the images in your blog posts into hot links. This includes photos, graphs, pie charts, banners, literally anything that isn't text. Making images into links puts them to work for you in multiple ways.
Caption your images and use keywords in those image captions.
Try using the words "image", "picture" or "photo" in your captions. Some searches look for a keyword plus one of those terms.
Don't just caption still images. Caption videos in your blog post. Keyword-bearing captions help make the video relevant to a search.
Write link targets that contain keywords. Hotlink to a phrase like "Lake Superior Homes", rather than linking to "click here".
Focus on keyword strings and phrases instead of individual keywords. It's especially important to use phrases that identify your service area. It's better to refer to "our Lake Geneva office" rather than "our office".
Flank your links with related descriptive text that puts that link into the context of a sentence. The link should fit smoothly into the content of that sentence.
Get creative with local keywords. Instead of resorting to the most obvious identifying keywords built around street address, city or town, community and state, try using zip code and county. Also use local geographic landmarks like lakes and rivers (i.e. "Lake Superior" or "Fox River"). Using a zip code as a keyword or tag can produce results and you'll find most bloggers are ignoring the use of zip codes.
Don't overload your blog post with keywords (keyword stuffing). It can have an opposite effect from what you hope to achieve.
[Birthplace of a blog - Workstation at our Madeline Island real estate office - Photo by Eric Kodner]
Comments(18)