Blasting my Blog with SEO

I have learned one important thing about search engine optimization from this week and I can sum it up in two words: Google It!!! The biggest way to find out if you are using SEO correctly and that it is working is to google your blog/website/post to see where it ranks. I googled my blog after I made it and couldn't even find it in the first 10 pages. Now, it is on the third page! Probably not the greatest achievement ever but I feel pretty proud and am excited to continue seeing how much higher it can climb as I continue optimizing. 

From the NMDL resource book page 215 I found an article titled "10 Basic SEO tips to Get You Started." This is what I followed to try to use SEO in my blog. The following are the steps and what I did to try it out myself:

#1: Monitor where you stand - I Googled my blog!  and wow...in just 5 minutes I went from page 3 to page 5! 

#2: Keywords- I used Google Trends to search what words people use in searching for my topic such as cheerleader, cheer, cheering, cheerleading, etc. 

#3: Link back to yourself- I used a Squidoo page to link back to my blog (and it was kind of fun to make in the process!)

#4: Create a Sitemap- attempted to do so but failed...going to try this again another time. 

#5 Search Friendly URLs- Can't change that using the NMDL blog network so SKIP

#6 Avoid Flash- ok that was easy. 

#7 Image descriptions- at first I skipped putting descriptions and captions in my pictures but I went back and changed that to include keywords

#8 Content- I tried to update my content as much as possible- I continue to blog whenever possible. 

#9 Social Media Distribution- I have posted updates to my personal facebook account, my work facebook account, twitter, etc. 

#10 Link to others- yesterday I linked to another blog that related to mine. I commented on his work and said that I would put a link to his blog on mine and asked for him to return the favor. He hasn't linked to mine yet but he hasn't spammed my comment either so thats a step!

Check out my blog that is continuing to improve and grow everyday here Rah Rah Respect  !!!

I have been working on optimizing all of my blog posts so I linked the whole blog.