First Steps to Increase Your Blog's Ranking

OK, so you have created your blog. And you have checked on the search engines, and it is so far down that you can't find it. If you can't find it, very few others will either!

Here are some things you need to know:

• What Key Words are you aiming for?

In other words, what words do you hope for folk to type into Google or Yahoo or other search engine? From these words you hope for them to find your page, high up in the results list.

You can get some idea of the popularity of specific key words by using this free resource:

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

• The Title Tag is the name of your website as shown in the heading of the window of your browser.

Use relevant Keywords in your Title Tag.

It may read as a sentence or be a sensible shortened form.

Make sure the title tag is relevant to the content on your page.

• Use appropriate Anchor Text for your links.

You want visitors to take another step - perhaps to go to your lead capture page, or just another page of information. The actual text they click on to go there is Anchor Text.

It is usually underlined to show it's a hyperlink. Keep the anchor text relevant to the site they will be visiting if they click. People don't like surprises or to feel they have been tricked into visiting a particular site.

Some other things to do:

• Search engines like to see that your page creates incoming traffic, so you need to facilitate that. If your page is good value, then bookmark it on bookmarking sites or other social networking sites. More traffic to your site generally results in a higher ranking position. And if others link to your page, even better.
• Make sure your hosting service lets the search engines know that you have new content.
• Don't just leave things - they won't get better by themselves. See what works, tweak it to make it better. And don't forget to ask for help!

Remember that after doing these things, you'll be closer to ranking higher. And there will be still more to tweak!

But these are essential first steps to take as you climb the ranking ladder!