There are some blogging guidelines every blogger should know about and apply to a certain degree. Some of the most important ones are that bloggers need to pay attention to SEO, headlines (both in relation to attention-grabbing and SEO) and the (number of) keywords/tags

- SEO

Search Engine Optimization is something you do both for search engines and your readers. After all, it is your potential readers who type in the words they are looking for in the search engines and the engines do their best to come up with the most relevant and popular of the results. So you want to use best keywords. But the best keywords aren’t necessarily the ones that are used most often during searches. If a keyword is too popular, it almost always means that someone has already taken advantage and ranked high in the engines using these words. So you have too much competition. It makes sense to use less popular but significant keywords that are relevant to your posts and articles. This part is for your popularity and desire to be found easily by your readers.

However the most popular keyword can also be the most relevant one. For instance, when I am writing a review on Gerard Butler’s life, I use a variety of keywords I find through free keyword research tools. But when I check his name (I mostly use freekeywords.wordtracker.com), I get over 3,000 daily results. Can you imagine how many hits this actor’s name gets each month? It is very difficult, if not virtually impossible for me to rank all that high with this main keyword. But I always include it. It is for me and my readers: Most websites (my blog included) have their own search engines. So when you arrive at my blog and type this name, you get all the posts about that actor. You may have found me through other keywords or maybe you didn’t find me through search engines at all. But now that you are on my page, you will find a lot of relevant information. This is to satisfy readers. But also it makes my job easier, because I can track how many different bodies of work I have written on a given topic.

- The Headlines:

We have been writers for a long time but we have been readers for even longer. So we have always known the importance of headlines and titles. Readers like the headlines to be exciting and clever. But they also need to give the readers a good idea on what the writing is going to be about. So we try to include SEO keywords in the title. But sometimes we have an idea for a writing series and just don’t want to give up on creativity completely. One of the headlines I chose for an article series I was writing was more topic-related then SEO rich. Still, it managed to be one of my popular posts. You don’t always have to please Google. And sometimes pleasing yourself also ends up pleasing your readers, which will make Google love you even more in the end.

- The Number of Keywords

There isn’t a certain limit to this but of course the search engines aren’t going to take you seriously if you tag each post with 100 keywords. However, some sites come with limitations or limitation suggestions on how many keywords a post should ideally be tagged with. On Factoidz, the suggested number is between 10 and 15. Wordpress suggests any more than 10 might be an unnecessary crowd.

Now, on general and broad-topic articles, sticking to about 10-15 keywords might be ideal. But imagine writing a list post including 10 names. You will need to tag these names,

And exactly because of the reasons stated above (for your keywords and SEO actions), you will also need to add more specific, SEO-friendly and low-competition keywords. I try not to use more than 20 keywords for any given post, but I won’t mind going overboard on my own blog if I am making a list that features, let’s say, 45 names/things.

Ignoring guidelines when you need to might end up pleasing you and your readers. It is just a perk that Google will love you more when your readers love you.