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Blogs, shortened form of weblogs, are the current rage in online publishing. You might not have a blog, but surely you've read or heard about them. Blogs allow millions of people to share their ideas, interests and products. Blogs have become a powerful way of sharing information on any subject thus, creating a more connected and socially aware global community. Like a typical website, a blog needs visitors to ensure its success. Search engines are a main source of readers. The use of search engine optimization is an effective way to drive traffic to a blog. It is important that a blog is optimized for high rankings because high ranking equals online traffic. In this regard, permalinks can help bring significant traffic to a blog.

About Permalinks

A blog is essentially a website consisting of posts or entries arranged in chronological order with the most current post appearing first in the home page. A blog usually consists of the title (headline of the post), post date, body or content, comments added by readers, permalink and category or tag (subject that the post discusses). A permalink indicates the URL (identifier for a document on the internet) which points to a specific blog post. A permalink is what a fellow blogger will use to refer to another blogger's post. It is used to link to other individual postings. A permalink is usually designated by text link or a symbol. The most common symbol used is the hash sigh (#). Certain blogs use their own symbols such as an asterisk, a dash or a hyphen. A permalink may consist of a string of characters which represent the date of posting, an identifier (domain name) which indicate the author who wrote the item and the post name or title.

A permalink or a permanent link is still available even after the post has been moved from the home page and into the blog archive. Permalinks are permanent. They remain unchanged hence the "perma" in the name. If a post is altered or moved within the database, its permalink remains unchanged.

Permalinks are setup to display in various formats. Different blogging softwares have their own format for permalink URLs. A few examples are:

* Movable Type and Typepad - http://.typepad.com////.htm/ * WordPress - http://///// * LiveJournal and Bloglines - http://.livejournal.com/.html

However, some blogging softwares like WordPress give the bloggers the options of customizing the permalinks for better search engine optimization.

About Search Engine Optimization

How can you get people to visit your blog when you are competing with tens of thousands of blogs around the world and a typical web surfer rarely reads beyond the first few results of a search query? This is where search engine optimization comes into play. Search engine optimization or SEO is the art of using keywords or key phrases, good and clean codes, well-written content, link popularity and careful organization to maintain a blog as close as possible to the top search result position for a given keyword or key phrases in search engines or directories.

Online traffic for a blog is achieved through search engines. If your blog does not appear in the top 20 search engine result positions, the chances of a web surfer clicking on your listing or actually visiting your blog is low. SEO tries to help organize your blog so that it will move up the search engine results and thus be read or found.

Permalink Optimization Tips

Search engines have their own respective algorithms that will determine which blog should appear on top of a search result. The top three search engines - Google, Yahoo and MSN use different factors to determine a blog's relevance to the search terms. As a result, a blog may come out on top of one search engine's hit list but may not necessarily be in the top ten of another search engine. Nevertheless, there are certain things that many top search engines have in common. So you can actually do certain things that will help boost your rankings for these search engines.

For instance, a permalink is essential to a successful; blog. In WordPress, a blogging software, you can manipulate how your permalink looks as this have an important effect on your blog's SEO. WordPress's default Permalink setup looks something like this - http://www.domainname.com/index.php?=2. A look at this URL says nothing about the permalink in such a way that it makes sense. It will be much easier to know what the post is if the title of the post or part of it is in the permalink. Internet users will not have to think twice whether they are linking to the right post. Your post will appear more attractive to search engines for the key words used in the permalink.

If you change your permalink structure to include the post name or post title, this will become part of the URL. If you use keywords which you want your blog to be found by in the post title, the chances of your blog being found by web surfers who search for those particular keywords are strong. Just like any normal website search engine marketing, use of appropriate keywords is significant to high ranking. Effective use of popular keywords in the title which appears in the permalink definitely helps.

Permalinks promote website browsing. A glance at a link to a permalinked blog, the web surfer will know how recent the post is and its title. A surfer can then easily disseminate word about a particular post. Since the post title is within the permalink itself, search engines will pick up the link faster and place the link in higher search engine ranking.

It is important that your permalink does not contain a lot of variables. It should be search engine friendly, meaning it can be easily spidered by search engine crawlers. A search engine friendly permalink avoids the use of too many symbols such as ?, = and & because these make the permalink difficult for a search engine to index. It should be emphasized that a search engine friendly permalink includes the post name or post title. Inclusion of the post name or title makes the blog post easier for search engine to index and therefore easier to find.

In a nutshell, to achieve permalink optimization, use more keywords and remove the useless tags to make the URL search engine friendly and people attractive. Include the post name and do away with symbols, post id because these make it harder to see the URL's keywords. Use a neat and concise permalink that describe your post. Here are two well-structured permalinks:

* http://www.seowordpress.com/2006/06/26/permalink-optimization/ * http://www,seowordpress.com/permalink-optimization

Give these permalink optimization tips a try and watch them boost your blog's search engine ranking.