In my foray into blogging, I've done tons of research about how to create content and make my blog SEO friendly. I'm learning so much about how search engines view my blog and also how visitors use my site. I'm really enjoying the education and thought I'd post some of the things I've been learning. This is part one of a 3 part series. Part one covers general blog setup and basic concepts. Please feel free to leave additional tips in the comments section of these posts.

Tips for Blog Setup and Administration

Utilize Trackbacks/Pingbacks

A Trackback is one method for blog authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking, and so referring, to their articles. Some Blog platforms support automatic pingbacks when the article is published. The term is used colloquially for any kind of Linkback.

A Trackback is an acknowledgment. This acknowledgment is sent via a network signal (ping) from the originating site to the receiving site. The receptor often publishes a link back to the originator indicating its worthiness. Trackback requires both sites to be Trackback enabled in order to establish this communication. Trackback does not require the originating site to be physically linked to the receiving site.

Trackbacks are used primarily to facilitate communication between blogs; if a blogger writes a new entry commenting on, or referring to, an entry found at another blog, and both blogging platforms support the TrackBack protocol, then the commenting blogger can notify the other blog with a "TrackBack ping"; the receiving blog will typically display summaries of, and links to, all the commenting entries below the original entry. This allows for conversations spanning several blogs that readers can easily follow.

A Pingback enables authors to keep track of who is linking to, or referring to their articles. Essentially, a Pingback is an XML-RPC request sent from Site A to Site B. However, it also requires a link. When Site B receives the notification signal, it automatically goes back to Site A checking for the existence of a live incoming link. If that link exists, the Pingback is recorded successfully. This makes Pingbacks less prone to spam than Trackbacks.

Ping Services Are Your Friend

Most blogging platforms also have support for automatic pings when the blog is updated. This requires using a ping service or ping server. Ping servers let other web-services subscribe to a list of blogs that have recently pinged them. Aggregators and blog search engines use results from ping servers to let subscribers know which items on their subscriptions have fresh content. For crazeegeekchick.com, I use Ping-o-Matic, which pings multiple other ping servers. I also found a list of 75 URLS for Blog Update Ping Services that looks pretty promising and for kicks added a few of those.

Use Sitemaps and Robots.txt

A Sitemap.xml file will help tell search engines how to crawl the content of your site. The Robots.txt file will tell search engines which directories not to crawl.

Syndicate Your Content

Most blog platforms offer RSS syndication. I also syndicate via Feedburner. I do this primarily because Feedburner offers Email Syndication. This allows users who prefer to read blogs via email to get my content daily. Some experts say that anywhere from 10% to 40% of site visitors prefer to read blogs via email. Other services for doing email syndication are Feedblitz, Zookoda and BotABlog, but I personally prefer Feedburner.

Organize with Categories

Set up blog categories – and optimize them. Use keywords in the category titles. This helps form a very SEO-friendly URL for each post you make. Organize your blog using these categories.

Allow for Comments/Responses

This is one mechanism for link exchange, but even better, it is a mechanism for networking and idea-exchange. Allow people to leave comments to your posts.

Submit Your Blog to Directories

To get your blog "on the radar", it's helpful to submit it to blog directories. It doesn't hurt to submit the blog to regular directories also that have categories for blogs (such as Google Blog Search etc). Yeepage has a list of 35 RSS Feed Sites to Promote Your Site. Don't forget to submit your site to Google too!

Play Nice With Google

Use Google's Webmaster tools. Read as much as possible about how Google works (of course you can Google this information). Google has some additional suggestions not covered in most of my research:

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Don't use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don't send automated queries to Google.
• Don't load pages with irrelevant keywords.
• Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Don't create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware.
• Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
• If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

Once again, most blogging platforms handle much of these concerns for you. My site runs on GraffitiCMS and the platform has made it simple to set up the blog to meet these guidelines.

Please read PART TWO of this series for tips and guidelines on creating SEO and Visitor friendly posts in your blog.

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingback | SEOarticles4U | Pandia SEO | WWWcoder | Google Webmaster Guidelines | Developing SEO Friendly URL's with ASP NET 2.0 | ChrisBrogan.com  | SEOBlog