The answer is yes, SEO is necessary for blogs, especially corporate blogs or blogs in highly competitive fields.

Blogs play an important supporting role for websites. They provide dynamic, constantly updated content that has the potential to go viral and attract traffic and links. They communicate with web users on a more personal level than most companies are able to do in during the course of daily business. But the only way they can do this properly is if they are optimised properly.

Blog elements that require optimisation

Scott Cowley says that the most overlooked element in blog optimisation is the home page. Think about it, how many blog home pages have you seen with static content? I’ll bet you can’t remember the last time you saw one with a decent static introduction or substantial footer note. Most blogs rely on their URLs, names and tag lines. That’s it.

That’s not to say that URLs, names and tag lines aren’t worth the effort, it just means that in the battle to grab eyeballs online you can’t afford to leave out anything that could give you an advantage.

So, get creative with your keyword research, buckle down and really focus on your niche and write a compelling intro that doesn’t repeat the information on your About page.

When it comes to display, ensure that you don’t show a long list of blog posts in their entirety. Use teasers – the first two paragraphs – and then link to the blog page itself. You get to show more blogs this way, and you maintain reader interest.

When it comes to blog titles you also need to consider keywords. You don’t have to conduct extensive keyword research, in fact most of the time you can just use common sense. For instance, what words or phrases would you use if you were looking for your topic? More often than not, keywords present themselves naturally in the text, which is incredibly convenient as the one thing you don’t want to do is come across as contrived.

Pay attention to header tags, especially H1 tags.

When linking out to other sites – sources, citations, references, etc – use your anchor text wisely. This helps the person you’re linking to, but it also draws attention to your area of focus. It may not play an enormous role in blog ranking factors but every little bit counts.

Apply similar wisdom to internal linking; where possible link to previous posts that covered similar topics.

Choose plug-ins that will help you monitor your blog’s success and make it more user-friendly.

Don’t be afraid to use blog hosting sites, such as WordPress, to their full potential. They are there to simplify your life, and the lives of search robots.

Not everyone is a fan of WordPress hosted blogs though, read David Mercer’s post for a contrary point of view.

Lastly, and this should go without saying, if you want your blog to attract quality traffic you need to write quality content. Without it your blog is nothing.