Eazy Cheezy's Five Free Apps

I’m sure many of you have heard about SEO, which is short for Search Engine Optimization. This is one area that I am still learning & looking to improve in. If you’ve been reading Eazy Cheezy, you know that when I learn something, I like to share.

SEO is the process of improving your site’s results in search results, such as Google, Yahoo, etc. Optimizing your content and site for search engines helps to increase the likelihood of your content displaying closer to the front. i.e. Prior to optimizing my “Free Sites to Watch TV, Movies & Sports Online” post, if you typed in “free sites to watch movies” into Google, you’d find it positioned on page 4 or 5. With the SEO techniques I applied below, the same string of characters will now let you find the same post on page 1 of Google’s search results.

1. Inserted Meta Tags utilizing tips from Our Blogger Templates. I added the blog name, my name and my blog description (full sentence, but heavy on keywords).

Meta tags are very significant to SEO since they help Search Engines more accurately index your pages. I look at Meta tags as a translator for Search Engines. We plug in information to Meta Tags and the Meta Tags translates the information so the Search Engines better understand.

2. Added “Alt Tags” & clickable links to images referencing Techknowl. I uploaded some of my pictures to Photobucket and added “alt tags” & a clickable link. Then re-added those images to Blogger, using the HTML/Java Widget.

Alt tags are important for a few reasons. If there’s a problem displaying your image, it will look for alt tags to display as a backup. It can also help those images appear in search results.

3. Changed reference link of uploaded screenshot images so they point to the site they were referencing. Before if you clicked on the image, you’d just get an enlarged version of the image on a blank page, which added no value. Now, click on the image and it will take you directly to the link. I used this doobix entry to help with the code.

This removes an annoyance & improves the usability of the articles. I doubt I’ll ever have the time to go through all 200+ posts I’ve had & apply this, but I’ve implemented it with newer and popular posts.

4. Optimized My Header Image using tingsplick. I uploaded my original header image to Photobucket, added “alt tags” then utilized the tips within the link to remove my header.

This enabled me to replace the standard Blogger Header. You’re limited with the Blogger Header and unable to add Alt Tags.

5. Added a “Related Articles” Widget to my Blogger site, using Hoctro’s New & Improved “Related Articles” Widget Using Google’s Ajax API.

This took a bit to get right, but now that I figured it out, it works pretty well. I still need to figure out how to move the Related Articles Widget above my comment section, but the Widget works quite well and will save me time since I will no longer need to manually search for Related Posts. It displays related posts, based on the “Labels” you add to your posts.

Resources
Search Engine Optimization for Blogs
SEO Training
101 SEO Tools
101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website
102 Ways to Make Your Site a Backlink Superstar
Top Search Engine Marketing Tools
D-List 200+ sites that have their “no follow” link disabled
How to Get Search Engine Traffic to Your Blog

I hope you’ve enjoyed and learned a bit from the hacks that I’ve provided above. As I touched upon earlier, I’m definitely no SEO expert, nor do I claim to be. Like many of you, I’m learning all I can to better improve upon my site. Do you have any SEO tips or hacks you’d like to share? Have you attempted any of the ones above? I’d love a good SEO discussion, since it can help us all learn more. Feel free to share your input.