5 four-minute killer SEO tweaks that 90% of bloggers ignore

Many of us bloggers are constantly looking for the next big SEO revelation. We’re looking for the killer secret that will land our blog on the top 10 in Google for our targeted keyword. While we’re wasting hours away looking for the big fish, we fail to see thousands of little fish swimming past us, that could’ve easily been caught to fulfil the day’s catch.

There are so many thing in terms of SEO that bloggers know and don’t do. Not that they are ineffective nor black-hat. But just because it’s effect isn’t that big. But like the fish analogy above, what we fail to understand is that a lot of those methods collectively can really make a significant impact on the SERPs that you’re targeting.

Meaningful Image Alt Tags

If I had a nickel for every blogger not using image alt tags in their blogs, I wouldn’t have to work for the rest of my life. You know, when a search engine spiders a web site, it really can’t see the image. How it identifies what the image is solely by looking at the alt tag. The alt (Alternative) tag is used to give the description of the image, when the image is still loading or being hidden in the browser. But, by specifying a meaningful alt tag, you can significantly increase the keyword density of the page as well as pull off some hits from Image Searches.

Applying no-follow to PHP redirected links

When you’re using PHP redirects to direct your visitors to you affiliate links, be sure you’re not redirecting the search engine spiders. Search engine spiders absolutely hate this! (being PHP redirected - it makes them dizzy I heard) So, be sure to add rel=”nofollow” to all your affiliate links.

No-following the unwanted links

If you’re into advanced SEO, you might be already doing this. But if you’re not, just give it a shot. The theory behind Google’s PageRank is that it gives you credit for other linking to your blog, and takes that back when you link to other sources. And this applies when you’re linking to pages from your own blog too. (thought not so much as outbound links) For an example, if you display “10 popular posts” and “5 related posts” per each page, 15 links per page are so draining your Link Popularity away for no reason. Spot these and nofollow them accordingly. Let the spider find your pages from your XML sitemap.

Optimizing META Tags

If you haven’t thought of optimizing META tags in your blog, I recommend you first use a tool like this. It’s really critical that you have META tags - and that you optimize them too. Most of the people let META description be auto-generated. This is quite alright. But be sure to at least optimize your home page and other articles that you’re receiving a faint bit of Search Engine traffic.

Using Homepage Excerpts

When bloggers use homepage excerpts, they are not only trying to influence more page views but also trying to save their blogs from duplicated content. Search Engines will penalize you very badly is they find the same content in your homepage and the single posts that the homepage is linked to. For this purpose, you can use anything from Ajaxed WP to Excerpt Editor WordPress plugin.