Google is deploying “universal search” – a comprehensive search result that provides semantic results from multiple content sources. Given that a Google search will produce relevant Web pages, blogs, photos, videos, audio clips and other media types when a user types in a search term, can you really optimize for semantic search?

In a word, yes. Optimizing for a semantic search - Yahoo! will be using semantic search algorithms, too – is not only possible, it’s recommended. You’ll want to be certain that you tag your content properly – whether it’s Web pages, videos, photos, audio clips, blogs or anything else – to help the search engines determine the relevance of your content.

That’s something you should be doing anyway – semantics or no semantics. If you could only do one thing to help a search engine find and rate your content, tagging just might be it. Just be certain that your tags are relevant to the content. If you mistag your content, or provide such general tagging that your content gets lost, you’ll be penalized by the search engine. Deliberately misidentifying your content is a good way to get your listing deprecated or removed. Failing to provide specific tags will relegate your content to a no-man’s land where your target audience rarely, if ever, goes.

If you don’t tag your content now, get in the habit of doing it. Think about the tags you’re applying and how they relate to your content. Be specific and accurate when you tag your content and stick to your optimization plan.

Universal search can be a good thing. Will you always hit in all areas? Probably not, but it will help your audience find the content it is looking for quickly and accurately, as long as you do your part!

Photo Credit: Billy Alexander

I’ve written about the importance of comments when it comes to blogging. As a blogger, you’ll be known by the comments you leave and receive. Comments, after all, are a great way to get important user feedback from your readership. Unfortunately, rogue blog comments on a blog can also be a source of frustration for bloggers because they are an emerging spam platform.

Spam, whether it’s in your inbox, your blog comments or the keywords on your site, is a friend to no one. It creates “noise” where “signal” ought to be, and makes it harder for visitors to find your site.

Spammers spend an inordinate amount of time trying to deceive the search engine spiders, and programmers spend an inordinate amount of time trying to frustrate rogue blog comments. However, developing an algorithm that can reliably detect a rogue blog comment is much easier said than done.

So as a blogger, how can you reduce the number of rogue blog comments you receive? Matt Cutts, from Google addressed the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Conference last week and suggested that bloggers should build trust mechanisms into their blogs, and blog programmers should incorporate methods whereby legitimate comments can be distinguished quickly from spam.

One suggestion was to require commenters to provide a valid email address, essentially establishing an account on the blog. Some type of authentication, to verify that the poster is actually human is another way. You may have seen Captcha on a blog or e-commerce site. It delivers a difficult-to-read string of numbers and/or letters that the user has to type in and submit before being allowed to comment or continue with a submission. Other similar technologies require the user to pick out certain photographs or answer a simple question. These activities are remarkably simple for a human to perform but boggle the spambots.

Cutts suggested that hosted blogging solutions are also a good way to reduce your status as a target. A hosted solution is monitored and updated with the latest patches and software versions (you hope!) and tends to be less vulnerable to known attacks.

He also pointed out that Google has developed a Webmaster resource that can help tired, overwhelmed or inexperienced Webmasters with tools like an auto-notification that alerts you if your site is being spammed by rogue blog comments, and stats to help you understand where your traffic is coming from.

In any event, it’s good to keep an eye on your comments (or moderate them) and delete irrelevant ones when they show up. Relevance is big with Google, and it’s a good bet that a blog that’s loaded up with rogue blog comments will get deprecated in the SERPs pretty quickly.

Photo Credit: Helene GP

SEO is a big determinant of how high your site ranks in search engine results pages. Making sure your site is spider-friendly can help visitors discover your site and your blog more easily.

Search engine spiders “crawl” your pages to find out what’s on your site and to categorize it for placement in search engine results. Creating a site map is one very easy way to make sure that the search engine spiders can reach each page in your site. Site maps are most often created for the benefit of a search engine, but visitors find them useful, too. Well-constructed, spider-friendly site maps help the search engine find all of the interior pages of your site and index them for later retrieval.

A complete site map is a single page that contains an HTML link to every other page on your site. Site maps are rarely beautiful. Instead, they’re simple pages that lay out a logical connection to each interior page. Organization and HTML links are the most significant requirements for a simple site map. If your site map contains these, you’re in good shape.

Providing a site map benefits your human visitors because they can quickly find the information or interior pages they’re looking for. Most visitors won’t look at your site map. Instead, they’ll prefer to navigate your site using the navigational aids you’ve built into your site. For some visitors, however, a site map provides a clear option to locate and access a particular page on your site.

The site map will be examined in great detail by a search engine spider, so making the page as spider-friendly as possible is important. You can tailor your keyword optimization strategies carefully and get those optimized pages into the search engine fast.

Site maps can also extend the page rank your home page enjoys to the rest of your site, provided that your site map is linked off of your top-level page. Spider behavior also provides a good reason to integrate your blog into your own Web site instead of having it hosted elsewhere. An integrated blog can take better advantage of site rankings.

The takeaway here is that a site map, while not much to look at for your human visitors, is an essential component of your Web site and can help get your entire site indexed quickly and regularly!

Photo Credit: Melissa W.

When it comes to blogging, blog post titles have a lot to do with how your blog is seen (and ranked) by the search engines. If all things were equal, clever titles would entice readers, but search engines neither look at blog posts equally, nor are they particularly clever. As hard as it might be, clever blog post titles may doom your post to search engine oblivion. Ultimately if the search engines don’t find your post or don’t rank it very high in search results, the readers who would have appreciated your clever title will never get to see it.

How do you make your blog post titles attractive to both readers and search engines? Ultimately, you want to appeal to readers, but to get to the readers, you have to get through the search engines. You may need to write your blog post titles a few times to get it noticed by both the search engines and the readers, so start with a basic title that’s reader-oriented.

Short is always better than long. Try to keep your blog post titles short. Don’t worry if your first attempt comes up long; you’ll be editing it anyway.

Make your blog post titles relevant to your post. After you’ve written your title, re-read your post and make sure your title genuinely relates to your subject matter. If not, modify it so that it accurately describes the subject matter.

Select interesting words that make the blog post titles stand out. Try to use words that your audience would use, or that are meaningful to your industry. Sometimes a question, or a seemingly absurd statement can catch a reader’s interest. Re-read your title. If this weren’t your post, would you read it based on its title?

Include keywords in your blog post title. A keyword is a search term that a user would type into a search engine. Keywords must be relevant to the subject matter of your post. When you were planning your blog, you probably developed a short list of keywords related to your subject. Optimize your post titles using those keywords. You won’t have room for more than one or two keywords in a title, but when you have the opportunity to use one or two, take it! If you’re struggling with how to include a keyword in a post title, try starting with the keyword and see what you can come up with.

There are many more techniques you can use to optimize your blog post titles, but if you’re new to blogging, these tips will provide a good starting point.

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Blogging is one of the best things to happen to small businesses. Why? Internet marketing isn’t so much about being the biggest business in your field, or spending the most on your advertising and marketing. It is about being found in the right place at the right time.

How many times have you eaten at McDonald’s because you knew what you could expect instead of eating someplace new and taking the risk of slow service, high prices or unappealing menu choices? In the past, consumers would choose the brand name not because they had some special appreciation for the brand or its products, but because the experience was predictable.

The Internet is changing all of that. Consumers are now empowered to find exactly what they’re looking for exactly when they need it. They care less about settling for the predictable than they do about finding exactly what they want. And they want it now. “It” could be a product, a service or just information. If you are a credible source, they’ll choose you over the predictable.

Blogging is one way to establish your credibility, and expose your business to the marketplace. It’s great for establishing a niche, or promoting the niche you occupy. In short, business blogging can put your small business on an even footing with the big players in your market, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t take advantage of the opportunity to do that.

Photo Credit: Spencer Ritenour

One of the mistakes bloggers make concerns the frequency of their posts. Your blog traffic will increase substantially if you post consistently. Some bloggers choose the daily posting schedule; others post less frequently, but still manage to maintain a regular posting schedule.

Your best bet is to be consistent, regardless of the posting schedule you choose. Consistency in message, posting schedule and keyword choices will all combine to improve your blog’s search engine visibility and will help to optimize your site.

Don’t mistake consistency for frequency because it’s much more than that. Be consistent in your message. You’re blogging for a reason. Know what your message is and who it’s targeted to. Post information that consistently addresses your reader’s needs and interests.

Make sure your posts consistently contain your keywords. Using a small group of keywords regularly will help you stay focused on your subject matter and will improve your ranking in search engine results.

Post on a consistent schedule. That doesn’t mean you have to post every day, but you should maintain a regular timetable. This will help your readers know when to expect new material from you and will help establish your credibility and demonstrate your commitment to the subject matter. Don’t post too infrequently, however. The less often you post, the less impact your blog will have. Readers will wonder what’s happened to you if you disappear for too long.

Consistency in all aspects of your posting – message, keywords and frequency – will elevate the visibility of your blog and help your target audience find you.

Photo Credit: Jean Scheijen

There are many ways to start and support a business blog, but to make your efforts productive, consider how your blog fits into your overall site.

Unfortunately, many business blogs are not truly integrated into a corporate Web site. They look like an afterthought, and optimization efforts suffer as a result. The very best business blogs look like they belong to the site they support. They’re as much a part of the site as the home page is.

Should you run a blog that’s completely separate from your main site? If you’re really committed to
achieving blogging results, optimization is going to be hard if your blog isn’t integrated into your web site. Having a second, separate blog site will double your work, slow down the links back to your main site, and it will probably leave your customers looking for confirmation that your blog and your Web site are really related.

Optimization is much easier if your blog is part of your main site. You’ll need to host your blog on your main site, and modify the look and feel of the blog to match your site. It means some extra effort but it’s definitely worthwhile. Making links out to your main site will be easier, and visitors will never be confused about the relationship between your blog and your site.

If you’re already considering a Web site redesign, a third integration option would be to use a content management system. This is a forklift replacement for your entire site, but gives you supreme control over all of the content, regardless of what it is.

Minimally, integrate your blog into your site, which means that you will host it locally, and make it visually like the rest of your site. Understand how your blog fits into your Web site, and integrate it as tightly as possible. By doing these things, you’ll reduce the amount of work you need to do to achieve solid blog optimization, and your customers will appreciate your content without having to wrestle with a non-integrated blog.

Photo Credit: Lucasz Grzyb

If you’re new to business blogging and blog optimization, try developing a limited set of keywords that you can use frequently in your posts. General keywords won’t produce a satisfying search engine result. You’ll need to find descriptive keywords that lead your readers directly to your blog. It’s much better to reach a small number of loyal readers than attract a larger number of one-time visitors.

Content is always king, so don’t post for the sake of posting. The ultimate goal is to generate valuable content. It’s the quality of your posts, not their quantity that attracts readers. Regular posting does offer blog optimization benefits, however. Search engines will visit your blog more frequently if your content is regularly updated. These visits will increase your search engine visibility.

Adding relevant images to your blog attracts readers. There are many free stock photo sites, and you can always post your own pictures. If you blog about products, manufacturers often have image galleries of their products that you can use in your posts. As with other elements of your posts, relevance is key. Irrelevant images may not hurt, but they won’t help.

Choose a limited number of interesting categories to file your blog posts under. Filing posts under a specific category will not only assist with blog optimization, but also will help new readers find the content they’re most interested in. Don’t let your number of categories creep away. Remain focused on your niche.

By knowing which keywords you will use in your blog posts, providing rich content for your readers, adding relevant images and working with a few interesting catgories, you’ll boost your blog optimization tremendously.

Photo credit: Amr Safey

By now, you know the importance of keywords in search engine visibility and blog optimization, but you may not be as certain when it comes to choosing keywords. The more descriptive your keywords are, the more likely you are to reach the audience you’re looking for.

When it comes to generating keywords - those terms that will cause a search engine to find your page or pages - you may not be confident that the terms you choose are most likely to be the same terms your potential readers will use.

There are several free keyword suggestion tools available to assist you with blog optimization. Probably the most well-known or well-used tool is the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. You don’t need a Google AdWords account to use it, and it can provide information about how often the term has been searched in recent months. It will also show an extensive list of related (or potentially related) terms and their search frequency. This tool can help you determine the popularity of your search terms, and provide a comparison of the popularity of related search terms.

Wordtracker also provides a keyword tool that creates a list of related keywords and compares their relative search frequency. Another keyword tool that is powered by Wordtracker and provides more in-depth information can be found at SEOBook.com. In addition to providing keyword information, this site can also help you determine the popularity of searches based on search engine and offers a nice comparison matrix, and links to more specialized tools.

Re-evaluate your keywords consistently for relevance. Remember: the more relevant your keywords are, the more likely you are to be found by the people you most want to reach.

When you take up the gentle art of business blogging, there are a few steps you can take that will assist you with optimizing your blog. Blog optimization ensures that your blog reaches the market segment you’re speaking to.

Whileblog optimization is different than search engine optimization, you will use some of the same techniques to improve your search engine visibility. When it comes to choosing keywords for your blog, you want to make sure you’re choosing very specific and very descriptive keywords. Using non-descriptive keywords, or vaguely descriptive keywords is, in some ways, worse than using no keywords at all.

Using highly specific keywords for blog optimization may reduce the overall number of hits you receive from a search engine, but it will elevate your search engine visibility for those potential readers who are truly searching for your material. Ultimately, these genuinely interested potentials will be worth more to you than those readers who land on your blog and find that it isn’t what they’re looking for. The major search engines provide keyword tools that can help you determine how best to approach blog optimization for your material.

You can also boost your search engine visibility by taking advantage of related blogs and sites. Promote your blog within your niche, and your links will turn into search engine gold practically before your eyes. Always look out for related blogs and related sites within your niche. Make yourself known through comments on other blogs as often as possible.

Your blog optimization efforts will also get a boost from appropriate listings in blog directories and catalogs. Describe your blog accurately and you’ll generate the kind of traffic you really want: interested visitors who want and welcome your content.

Photo credit: Rodolpho Clix