You can not get SE love unless the search engines love you first. Here are Ten ways to make search engine love your blog:
1) Build A Site
A real site. Not some monetized page serving as a base domain so you can submit galleries. Not some two-page/two-gallery mini site.
Build a real site, one that is worth re-visiting. Build a blog. Build a directory. Build your own TGP. Build whatever you want but build something substantial that a surfer might bookmark.
Build it and update it regularly. Add original content or buy some and use that as the mail draw.
You can pad it with sponsor content like links to galleries and mini sites.
Search engine algorithms are pretty damned sophisticated and most of them ignore banners farms, single galleries and mini-sites.
SEs like real sites.
Build one.
2) Start A Blog
I know. I have said this and have been saying this for half a decade but it is still true Search Engines love blogs. I do not know why.
It probably has to do with blog software/RSS feed magic. It does not really matter. SEs love blogs. Start one.
3) Update!
Update daily. Update weekly. Update monthly. Just update and update consistently. And by “update” I mean to add new content. A new gallery. A new video clip. A new story.
4) Write Text
When SEs index your site, the only data they are going to gather about your images are their filenames. Put some actual words (paragraphs even!) on your site. Search Engines look for words. Search Engines remember words.
5) Use Search Terms And Keywords
When those SEs look at your site and they find words, they catalog those words so that when surfers enter words and phrases into search boxes, the sites with those words show up in the results.
When implementing #4 of this article, make some of those words be keywords and search phrases relative to the content on your site.
6) Avoid Keyword-Stuffing
When implementing #4 and #5, that does not mean plopping a bunch of keywords at the bottom of your main page. Search Engines will not love you if you do that. In fact, they might punish you by ignoring your site completely.
7) Get Linked
Search Engines love it when outside domains link to your site. The more popular the outside domain linking to you, the more the SEs will love you.
Get hooked up with as many one-way links back to your site as possible. The more outside domains link to you, the higher you climb on the SE results. Backlinks are very important!
8) Link To Yourself
Own different domains. Make sites for those domains. Have all the domains link to each other.
Call it a hub. Call it a traffic pump. Call it a network. Call it whatever you want but SEs see it as other domains linking to your site and when it comes to the benefit of outside links, see #7.
9) Network Socially
Comment on blogs. Join Twitter. Sign up for Facebook. Get a Tumblr. Submit cool stuff on Reddit. Be a part of the self-feeding, incestuous world of social networking and make sure to include a link to your site in your user/member profile(s).
It is crazy how often the most innocuous things you’ve contributed show up in search engine searches.
10) Give Your Images Real Names
Do not forget image-search engines for SE love. And when one of your images gets hotlinked thanks to the fact that you gave it the right name, do not punish the hotlinker by replacing the image with some mean note.
Treat yourself and add a watermark (with a URL to your site) on the image. It is free, passive advertising. Also do not forget your ALT tags!
Granted, I left out some well-worn SEO tips like META tags, Title tags, submitting to DMOZ and making sitemaps. You should do those as well but TEN is a nice round number and I wanted to write about SEO without resorting to stuff that has been said since the 1990’s.
Of all the tips/ways/whatever, probably the most important are #3, #4 and #7. Put text on your site, update regularly and get as many other webmasters to link to your domain as you can. SEs can not love you unless you show them love.
Do the ten. Do the rest. Be honest. Keep at it and you will be the beneficiary of SE LOVE.