In How to be a successful blogger part 1 I discussed some simple blogger settings and advised people to submit to google and use pingomatic and then in part 2 I discussed how to define success.

There are three factors critical to success as a blogger if for you part of success means being read
1- Making google your friend
2- Becomming part of a community
3- Using RSS/Atom/XML wisely

The best thing about search engines is they all work together by and large and all tend to follow google like a flock. Bizarrely several search engine robots arrived at my site today within an hour of each other to index it- makes you think they hunt in packs!

Fortunately for you google loves blogs already, and if you focus on issues 2 and 3 google will also like you even more.

I don't mean to brag, but I have just trawled through a 20 page report which in close print lists the different keyword phrases people have used to find this blog from search engines in about the last 3 months. In all honesty, I have done nothing new in those months to try and drive traffic here from search engines. Why did I have almost 4000 keyword combinations leading people to my site in that time? It is simply because I have implemented some totally legitimate ways of making this blog google friendly in an ongoing way which requires absolutely no efffort on my part. I will share these with you.

How can I make google my friend?

• Choose the title of your blog sensibly, and ensure that your page has a title implemented in the header (this will also be seen at the top of the browser window) I would strongly advise the inclusion of the word "Blog" in your title somewhere- tell people what it actually is.
  

• Include the above title in text form (NOT just a graphic) in the first paragraph of text the robot will get to read.
• Add other Meta tags although these are less crucial
• Update your blog reasonably frequently
• When constructing your site, ensure that all your pages include a link back to your main page.
• Ensure that the title of each post is active as a hyperlink to the full version of the post (ie if you click on the post title- in this case "how to be a succesful blogger...." it should take you to the post- ensure that you have implemented individual post pages also.
  
• Ensure that you have an archive and that links to the archive pages are available early in your webpage as it is read by a search engine robot.
• Ensure that your main content is available early in the page and that content drops off your front page neither too quickly or too slowly- something like a minimum of a weeks worth of posts should be available on your main page

2. Become part of a community

Google LOVES community almost as much as we do. There is no better way yet invented for it to work out what people want to visit than link counting and the use of the words that are in links. The best thing about this is that it seems that sites which are themselves generous with links to other sites are liked by google too. Try and ensure that you both give and receive links freely. Try and get into the habit of linking to a blog not by its name but rather by a phrase that is relevant. So for example, if I wanted to link to this post as a fellow blogger I should really write something like "Adrian Warnock has an interesting post about google optimisation for bloggers." I know I don't always do this, but every time anyone links to a url and uses a phrase to describe that URL it is simply a vote for that phrase to be linked to that url. If several bloggers link to a site in the same way, it will have a higher chance of jumping up the rankings.

Some people get annoyed about this and call it "google bombing" and certainly it can be taken too far. The lines are difficult to draw, however. What if I was to srnd to some of my blogging friends the following as an email-

"look, would you consider doing me a favour, my london church is trying to get a few more hits to its website- would you consider the next time you refer to me in a blog post saying something like 'Adrian Warnock, a blogger and a preacher at a london church recently said' to give us a hitch up".

Would that be going too far? Certainly it would probably only take a handful of bloggers to influence that particular search engine result- would clubbing together to use our power in that way be unacceptable?

I personally think that linking should be done to sites you like without an expectation of a return, but if you do link either to the site or a specific post, as I have said before for goodness sake let them know- they may decide that they too like your site. Do NOT however believe that a link on your site somehow buys a link on someone elses- if you take bloggers kindness for granted you will soon realise your mistake!

Community should not be formed merely for the sake of influencing search engine results. However, do try to form friendships online with bloggers that arrise out of shared interests and views that also involve regular linking on commenting on one anothers posts (eg the way I and Jollyblogger and increasingly the Warnie award winners group do). Dont abuse other bloggers, but assuming you are not being cynical, you can enjoy your interactions safe in the knowledge that a useful by-product is that you are probably building your search engine rankings.

Similarly, building community can also mean joining blogroll and/or aggregation lists like the blogdom of God. This WILL boost your rankings, but should not be done solely for this purpose- people might find you out! Currently, I am not processing new members to the Blogdom of God itself. Instead, people can join the Evangelical Aggregator (which is in turn a member of the blogdom of God and aggregates there) and ask Stephen to include them in the Blogdom of God blogroll as well.

If you want into the BofG and are not evangelical, you can join one of the other aggregators which are being included in the aggregator, and there should shortly be some other member aggregators which can also add you to the blogdom of God blogroll.

Remember, you are in the blogosphere to give something back- so always, always be on the look out for great posts that other people have written and great blogs you can link to.

Dont be shy about commenting on other peoples blogs, and a comment like "Great post, I have written about this over on my blog at www.yoursite.com" will be greatfully received by most bloggers (provided you really HAVE written about it and you really DID like the post!)

3. Use RSS/Atom/XML

If your blog system doesnt provide a feed, change your blog system. The help files for each system should explain how to implement them. Just make sure that it is listed on your site, and that you always use pingomatic to update the various blog-specific seach engines that you have posted. I checked again, and currently I actually have eight times the number of visitors to my XML file than I have to my index page! So get the old feed going!