Nowadays it is such an easy task for anyone to create and launch a blog in the online environment with hundreds of weblogs launched daily worldwide. However, blogging is not only adding a template to WordPress and start creating posts but also optimising it for a better positioning in search engines. Higher ranks translate into more visitors and in the end, that is what every blogger needs, right?

Content was, is and will always be the king, that phrase should guide your entire blogs creative process. Many webmasters still go with the old-style keyword stuffing where the actual post is filled with keywords they want to rank for but nowadays this method, instead of helping your rankings, can definitely hurt them. Content should be well documented, written for both search engines and for visitors as well. In the end, fantastic content is the one that drives links to a site or become so viral that in one day a website can get a flood of traffic that can then become loyal readers.

Watch out for duplicate content. Though there is no penalty for duplicate content, as Google stated in the past, it is advisable to use a duplicate content generator like bots. Although, duplicate content can result from misusing the blog’s functions, these can be solved easily. Use Google Webmaster Tools to setup your primary address first, whether it is with or without www and also make use of 301 redirects.

Do a proper keyword research. Do not aim for hard-to-get keywords, instead use the long tail ones that get a decent amount of searches and are easier to rank for. A great tool for this is Google Related searches. When using it bloggers will find interesting new long-tail keywords Google considers “search-able” so try to use it as much as possible.

Optimise your images. Best practices tell us to give them descriptive names (instead of image03847.jpg use keyword.jpg. Also, never forget to add a description to the image containing the keyword again. People do not only search for text but also for pictures and videos, so try to optimise those two as well.

Make use of meta titles and meta descriptions. The most important one is the meta title while it appears in the search engines’ results so create an appealing one, one that will make the people click through your link to read more. Also, create an SEO meta description, always use your primary keywords at the beginning but again, do not do the mistake of stuffing it with keywords.

Always create an XML site-map. XML site-maps are easy to create and once they are live, submit them to the major search engines available.

Internal link structure has a major importance. Always link back to your homepage when using keywords and also make use of internal linking to create deep links to your inner pages. A major mistake one might do is to use the wrong anchor text for the link (instead of “blue widgets” they use “here”). Try to avoid this mistake.

Back-links can be created in various way, from social bookmarking to link-baiting, what matters most though is the quality over quantity. Always, a homepage link from an authority PR6 website will be more powerful than maybe 100 links from blog comments. Also, link diversity plays a major role in Google’s eyes.

Stay tuned with UK’s best web designers’ blog for new interesting tips and tricks related to online industry.

A new report has revealed that Bing recorded the biggest search growth last month. The search engine, owned by Microsoft, showed a 7% month-on-month increase and now captures almost 10% of the US search engine marker.

The Hitwise survey also found that while Google still reigns supreme with almost three-quarters of the entire search market, the giant did see a 1% drop month-on-month.

Yahoo’s share of the search market stayed around the same at just less than 15% while Ask captures just more than 2% of the market, representing a growth of 2%.

Hitwise also looked at which search engines were used for searching various categories.

•    Google was revealed to have the most visits to automotive, health, shopping and travel categories.
•    Yahoo saw gains in the automotive and shopping categories.
•    Meanwhile, Bing saw triple-digit growth in three categories – automotive, shopping and travel – including a 199% increase in the Shopping category.

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Research has revealed that organic search engine results play a direct role in whether or not a paid listing is clicked. The study by an America university found that if both a paid result and an organic result appear at the same time in a search listing then there is a greater chance of your paid result being clicked on.

It’s thought that these findings have come about because of our tendency to trust organic listings more than paid ads.

The research found:

*The impact of organic listings on paid advertising is 3.5 times stronger than vice-versa
* There is a positive link between paid and organic listings, which could increase advertisers’ profits by at least 6.15%
* Click-through rates, conversion rates and total revenues are higher when both paid and organic listings are present at the same time.

Microsoft is hoping that its new style of “simpler but smarter” searches will be enough to take on the big boys of the search engine world.

Re-branding as Bing.com, Microsoft believes the new search engine will offer strong competition for both Google and Yahoo.

Bing claims to make searching more relevant to the user by understanding the intention of searches, and grouping more related information to the original query.

So, for example, searches for a product will not only offer info about the item but will also link to reviews, accessories and online shops.

Microsoft’s plan is to reduce the amount of clicking a user has to do to find specific and related information.

Bing.com will go live first in the US and launches in beta elsewhere. Currently Google has more than 64% of the search market in the US, followed by Yahoo at 20% and Microsoft at 8.2%.