8/24/06

Permalinks For Boosting SEO

Blogs, shortened form of weblogs, are the current rage in
online publishing. You might not have a blog, but surely you’ve
read or heard about them. Blogs allow millions of people to
share their ideas, interests and products. Blogs have become a
powerful way of sharing information on any subject thus,
creating a more connected and socially aware global community.
Like a typical website, a blog needs visitors to ensure its
success. Search engines are a main source of readers. The use
of search engine optimization is an effective way to drive
traffic to a blog. It is important that a blog is optimized for
high rankings because high ranking equals online traffic. In
this regard, permalinks can help bring significant traffic to a
blog.

About Permalinks

A blog is essentially a website consisting of posts or entries
arranged in chronological order with the most current post
appearing first in the home page. A blog usually consists of
the title (headline of the post), post date, body or content,
comments added by readers, permalink and category or tag
(subject that the post discusses). A permalink indicates the
URL (identifier for a document on the internet) which points to
a specific blog post. A permalink is what a fellow blogger will
use to refer to another blogger’s post. It is used to link to
other individual postings. A permalink is usually designated by
text link or a symbol. The most common symbol used is the hash
sigh (#). Certain blogs use their own symbols such as an
asterisk, a dash or a hyphen. A permalink may consist of a
string of characters which represent the date of posting, an
identifier (domain name) which indicate the author who wrote
the item and the post name or title.

A permalink or a permanent link is still available even after
the post has been moved from the home page and into the blog
archive. Permalinks are permanent. They remain unchanged hence
the “perma” in the name. If a post is altered or moved within
the database, its permalink remains unchanged.

Permalinks are setup to display in various formats. Different
blogging softwares have their own format for permalink URLs. A
few examples are:

• Movable Type and Typepad – http://.typepad.com////.htm/
• WordPress – http:///////
• LiveJournal and Bloglines – http://.livejournal.com/.html

However, some blogging softwares like WordPress give the
bloggers the options of customizing the permalinks for better
search engine optimization.

About Search Engine Optimization

How can you get people to visit your blog when you are
competing with tens of thousands of blogs around the world and
a typical web surfer rarely reads beyond the first few results
of a search query? This is where search engine optimization
comes into play. Search engine optimization or SEO is the art
of using keywords or key phrases, good and clean codes,
well-written content, link popularity and careful organization
to maintain a blog as close as possible to the top search
result position for a given keyword or key phrases in search
engines or directories.

Online traffic for a blog is achieved through search engines.
If your blog does not appear in the top 20 search engine result
positions, the chances of a web surfer clicking on your listing
or actually visiting your blog is low. SEO tries to help
organize your blog so that it will move up the search engine
results and thus be read or found.

Permalink Optimization Tips

Search engines have their own respective algorithms that will
determine which blog should appear on top of a search result.
The top three search engines – Google, Yahoo and MSN use
different factors to determine a blog’s relevance to the search
terms. As a result, a blog may come out on top of one search
engine’s hit list but may not necessarily be in the top ten of
another search engine. Nevertheless, there are certain things
that many top search engines have in common. So you can
actually do certain things that will help boost your rankings
for these search engines.

For instance, a permalink is essential to a successful; blog.
In WordPress, a blogging software, you can manipulate how your
permalink looks as this have an important effect on your blog’s
SEO. WordPress’s default Permalink setup looks something like
this – http://www.domainname.com/index.php?=2. A look at this
URL says nothing about the permalink in such a way that it
makes sense. It will be much easier to know what the post is if
the title of the post or part of it is in the permalink.
Internet users will not have to think twice whether they are
linking to the right post. Your post will appear more
attractive to search engines for the key words used in the
permalink.

If you change your permalink structure to include the post name
or post title, this will become part of the URL. If you use
keywords which you want your blog to be found by in the post
title, the chances of your blog being found by web surfers who
search for those particular keywords are strong. Just like any
normal website search engine marketing, use of appropriate
keywords is significant to high ranking. Effective use of
popular keywords in the title which appears in the permalink
definitely helps.

Permalinks promote website browsing. A glance at a link to a
permalinked blog, the web surfer will know how recent the post
is and its title. A surfer can then easily disseminate word
about a particular post. Since the post title is within the
permalink itself, search engines will pick up the link faster
and place the link in higher search engine ranking.

It is important that your permalink does not contain a lot of
variables. It should be search engine friendly, meaning it can
be easily spidered by search engine crawlers. A search engine
friendly permalink avoids the use of too many symbols such as
?, = and & because these make the permalink difficult for a
search engine to index. It should be emphasized that a search
engine friendly permalink includes the post name or post title.
Inclusion of the post name or title makes the blog post easier
for search engine to index and therefore easier to find.

In a nutshell, to achieve permalink optimization, use more
keywords and remove the useless tags to make the URL search
engine friendly and people attractive. Include the post name
and do away with symbols, post id because these make it harder
to see the URL’s keywords. Use a neat and concise permalink
that describe your post. Here are two well-structured
permalinks:


http://www.seowordpress.com/2006/06/26/permalink-optimization/
http://www,seowordpress.com/permalink-optimization

Give these permalink optimization tips a try and watch them
boost your blog’s search engine ranking.
About The Author: http://www.theinternetone.net

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