superboreen / Flickr

I am by no means an SEO expert, but if you plug my name into most search engines, you’ll find a lot of what I want you to find in the first few pages of results. This has come as the result of years spent blogging, posting on social networks — in a word, publishing.

Occasionally, like yesterday morning, I speak to journalism students about how I do what I do. One of the things I’m asked most often is “How can I get myself to rank high in search results?”

This post is meant as a DIY guide to getting started, but I strongly, strongly caution you that this is by no means a definitive work of how-to. If you wish to scroll down past all my preamble, I’ve posted several links to sites that can teach you a lot more about SEO than I can. These are the people I learn from, and they’re mostly the sources for everything I have to say anyway.

Step 1/Rule 1: Good SEO comes from quality content

I cannot emphasize this point enough. Your goal in building up your own personal SEO is to draw people to your content, so you obviously want to put forth your very best.

I’m not going to pretend like every blog post I’ve ever published has been great. Some of it has been downright shitty. The stuff that’s worked, and that’s drawn people to this blog, has been the stuff I’ve invested my time and effort in.

Fuss over your writing the way you would a term paper. And seriously, if you work on something for a long time and it’s just not happening, don’t be afraid to trash it.

Decide on an identity and stick to it

I’m “paulbalcerak” on every network I join. It may or may not be as easy for you to claim your real name like that — sorry, John Smiths of the world — but from an SEO standpoint, consistency is more important. Just make sure you also use your real name. For instance, Ian Lurie’s Twitter handle is @portentint, but his name is Ian Lurie. (Follow the link.)

Do I have to say this? Don’t pick some ass-hatted screen name like “LadiesMan_2012.” Use something you can put on a résumé.

Decide what you want to blog about

If we’re talking about SEO, we’re ostensibly talking about blogging — like I said earlier, publishing. You need to consistently publish in order to build strong SEO, and preferably, you need to stick to a niche.

My niche on this blog has become, more or less, branding. I like that because it’s specific, but it’s also broad enough that it allows me to write about colors, and then pivot and do a piece about how to build up search engine rankings.

If you’re using your blog to further your career, you should use that space as the starting point for where you want to go. When I started out, I blogged a lot about where I thought the journalism industry should go and what it should look like. Now, I get paid to shape that future. Don’t be afraid to tell people what you’re about and what you want.

Read. A lot.

Once you’ve figured out what you want to write about, go find people that are a million times better at it than you are, and devour their writing. Link to it. Blog about it. Comment on their sites. You’ll be stronger in your field and better educated within a few weeks.

Now here’s the part where I send you to other people’s sites. These are the writers/SEO experts I learn the most from:

• Ian Lurie / Conversation Marketing
• Rand Fishkin (et al) / SEOmoz
• Copyblogger
• Darren Rowse / ProBlogger

*_Abhi_* / Flickr

I love blogging. Or, more specifically, I love my blog.

If you’re blogging and you don’t love it, it probably shows, so change what you’re doing, how you’re doing it or just stop. I guarantee that you have something interesting to say, but if you’re not enjoying what you’re saying, there’s not much of a point in saying it.

It’s OK to get stuck. It’s OK to reformulate. It’s OK to hang it up for a bit.

Brittney Bush / Flickr

Somehow, this is my first post since last Friday, though before that, I was on a tear and posted every day, if not multiple times per day.

I’m a streaky blogger — I post a ton, then I fall off the earth, then I post a ton… — which I realize must be frustrating, as I find baseball players who perform that way completely aggravating.

The thing is, I struggle sometimes to know how to keep fresh content on my site. I’ve heard all the “schedule posts in advance” and “keep a few posts in the can” advice, but I just haven’t found a rhythm yet.

So I’m appealing to you: What do you do to keep your blog fresh?

Lately I’ve stopped caring and just posted whenever there’s something I want to shed light on. It’s been fun and it’s felt good to write here every day.

Here’s how it’s paid off in pageviews:

It’s a bit of a dog and pony show over here, but I love it and I’m proud of the traffic I get. Thanks to all of you who come by and read, and to those who think enough to pass my posts on.

ruminatrix / Flickr

I was this close to publishing a post entirely different from this one. I had written it the other day; I flipped open my laptop about 10 minutes ago, read over the post and…it sucked. I mean, it seemed genius when I wrote it the other day, but it sucked.

Two lessons here:

1. Whenever possible, give your posts 24 hours to marinate and reread before you publish them.
2. Don’t be afraid to trash them altogether.

I’m a better writer and blogger for chucking that crap piece on the scrap heap. You will be, too.

Go to Google and start querying questions…if I worked in the motorcycle gear industry I might go to google and begin searching for “what is the best motorcycle” – DON’T HIT ENTER – then just watch the suggestions come back. BINGO, now you got topics.

via How to produce 2-3 quality blog posts in 1 hour a month | Seer Interactive SEO Blog.

In keeping with that, I found an interesting page on Ryan Sholin’s site, which sort of functions as a newsfeed/link roundup:

Newstangle | Invisible Inkling

Looks like — and I’m thinking in WordPress terms here — he created a category and then ran that category on its own page. It comes up specially flagged on his main page. UPDATE: Should’ve looked back a few posts — he’s importing his Delicious links.

What do you think of this method? Would it be worth it for me to implement something similar on this site? (For the record: I like it.)

Link via Kevin Sablan, who, along with Ryan, runs a kick-ass blog worth subscribing to.

Source: NASA Commons on Flickr

I’ve been mulling for a while how to add more valuable content to this site without spending too much time every day writing and blogging and for the next week, I’m going to experiment with treating this blog like it’s my Tumblog.

Here’s what that means:

• More posts, more often.
• Shorter posts.
• More links.

In addition, I hope to keep up my usual pace of blogging. So essentially, I’ll be shooting for a handful of short posts throughout each day and 3-4 longer-form, original posts throughout the week.

Wish me luck, and if the change in format becomes annoying or strikes you as an abysmal failure, please let me know.

Source: p0ps Harlow's Flickr page

Copyblogger’s 5 Content Steps to Take For the New Year made me think about the long-delayed moves I’ve been wanting to make to this blog that I hope to finally make in 2011. Maybe if I spell them out here, that’ll keep me motivated to follow through:

• Migrate over to WordPress.org. I’ve wanted to move this site to its own host and take advantage of all the customization available with hosting my own site for a long time. What’s stopped me? Time and level of difficulty. But I’m ready to just say to hell with it, throw down the money and learn, the hard way, how to customize my site. If it looks crappy for a while…oh well. I’m all about transparency and learning out in the open.
• Come up with a new name and brand for my blog. I’ll always keep paulbalcerak.com as an online business card, but I’ve wanted to move the blog over to its own identity, independent of me. For one thing, “Balcerak” isn’t an easy name to spell and for another, it’s too easy with a name like mine to own my search engine rank. I want to get out there and try to compete for SEO in a niche. (More on the name I came up with in a future post.)
• Blog more often. I say this one all the time, but I’ve been trying it more in recent weeks. I’ve realized that the blog I want — one that’s updated constantly with always-original content — isn’t feasible and I may need to stick to just occasional fully-original posts while piggybacking on others’ posts for daily updates (like this post).

What plans do you have for your blog in 2011? Better yet: How are you planning on sticking to those plans? Let me know in the comments.

A big thanks to the editing/curating team over at TNTJ. I’m really excited to have the opportunity to contribute to a group blog with such a talented roster of writers. It’s also very cool to have the occasional post showing up on an overseas (British) site.

Please do check out the post and leave feedback over there.