The idea of you coming online and using blogging as a strategy is to start a routine of publishing blog posts, have it on the internet for a lifetime and attract visitors, subscribers and buyers, right?
But does it really work in that order?
In many cases it isn’t that easy.
As a matter of fact a lot of bloggers with home business quit because they don’t get what they expect or they just wanted to “try it out” without putting serious effort into it.
On the other hand, there are many of you who just don’t know what direction and steps to take in order to generate traffic from the internet.
When I say internet, I’m talking about search engines like Google, MSN, and Yahoo.
You want your target audience to search specifically for your blog posts and carry out a certain action, right?
Well if you want to have a better chance of this, one of the options you want is to make sure each of your blog posts, that is each blog post you want buyers to come to, be SEO friendly.
Some of you don’t like that “SEO” word, while other’s of you don’t have a clue of what it really is.
In this post, I’m going to explain to you what SEO is and how you can easily implement it within the blog posts you want.
Content SEO (Search Engine Optimization) acronym, business concept
“Google only loves you when everyone else loves you first.” ~ Wendy Piersall
When you first heard about SEO, what went through you mind?
Were you open to learning more about it and how to implement it into your blog posts?
Or did you have more of a feeling of despair and daunt?
Many of you might have thought “Oh great! I want to know how I can improve my content and I see this is how the big boys do it.”
Or maybe it was “Do I really have to learn this SEO thing? I just want to get traffic and make money”.
Either way it goes, SEO can be benefit. Although you can get by without it up to an extent, I’m one that doesn’t like to put all my eggs in one basket, meaning I don’t want to use just one strategy when I can use several working ones at one time.
I’m of the mentality of “You never know how people are going to find your blog posts.”
If you’re new to blogging, you’re probably wondering what SEO is?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and this basically mean you’re preparing the content within your blog posts to be recognized and indexed in search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo. In this sense, when people actually do a search for a topic you written about, it hopefully shows up within the first couple of pages of that particular search engine.
I would compare it to finding a book in the Library. If you’re looking through the card catalog (Yes, I’m old enough to have used card catalogs in my lifetime) or on computer, then that particular book will show up.
Imagine if people happened to run into your blog just from doing a search on Google?
What if this was consistent?
To get a good start on this, you want to make your posts SEO Friendly.
There’s a few things things you want to include in each post, but I want to make this simple and easy for you.
Yes, many of you may not have a lot of time to publish blog as many times as you want to. But that’s ok.
It’s not about how many blogs you publish, but being of value to your audience and to search engines.
Now let’s start off with how your specific audience look for blogs on search engines using Keywords.
SEO Friendly Blog Posts: Keyword Search
Doing keyword search now is different than it was a couple of years ago.
Now it’s looked upon as a concept or message that you’re trying to get across that is the glue that holds the context of the topic you’re writing about together.
So for example. Let’s say the topic you want to talk about is SEO Blogging . You want to look for keywords that are relative to this idea.
if you were to type this into UberSuggest you’ll get a list of keywords that you want to include into your blog and build a cohesive message around it. Here’s a few words that turn up:
SEO Blogging Tips
SEO Blogger Tricks
SEO Blogging for small business
SEO benefits of blogging statistics
You want to add these words and similar words to craft your blog post around the idea of SEO Blogging. Search Engines are smart enough to get the idea of what you’re talking about.
To Understand keywords, you must know that there are mainly 2 types of keywords which are Broad Keywords and Long-tail Keywords. Here’s a quick definition of both.
Broad Keywords
These keywords tend to be generic and have a high search volume. They’re very competitive Which means that if you use broad keywords, your blog will be lost in the noise and it’ll be hard for your target audience to find your blog posts.
For them, it would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
In the example above the acronym “SEO” would be considered a broad keyword.
Long-tail Keywords
Typically these keywords tend to be at least 2 or more words.
They are more specific, don’t get as much search volume, and there’s less competition. In this case it would be like trying to find a horse in a haystack 😉
What tools can you use to find keywords?
There are several tools and I’ll tell you what I’ve been consistently using:
Ahrefs not only lets you find content that get a lot of shares, but also you can find out what keywords these sites been using.
Google Keyword Planner allows you to enter a topic to find keywords or you can enter your “competitors” site to see what keywords they used to generate organic traffic.
Google Suggestions to find long tail keywords that are popular
SEO Friendly Blog Posts: Where To Place Keywords
It’s important to know where to place keywords. You want to keep in mind that search engines are going to look for cohesive key phrases within your post to determine how they’re going to rank it.
Keep in mind that keywords now days are looked up as a concept or how the keywords you use are related to each other throughout your blog post.
This makes it easier for search engines and our audience to get the context of what you’re trying to convey.
With that said, there are certain places within your post that you want to make sure you place your keywords. This is a common practice I do with a lot of my blog posts.
So without further adieu, lets get into the meat of this post!
Engaging Headline With Keyword
Honing your copywriting skills will get your audience engaged with the message you’re trying to get across.
You want to be able to conjure the emotions of your audience so they can connect with the message better.
It starts with your Headline and eventually your sub-headlines.
If you want to keep your audience engaged throughout your post, then you want to make sure that your headlines are in direct proportion with their emotions.
Here’s a popular formula that you can use for your main headline to start off.
For your sub-headlines you want to make sure that each one is built around your target keyword.
And remember it’s the context of keywords within your subheadlines that correlates with keyword used in the main headline that counts
For example:
Who You Really Want To Be Subscribers To Your Blog
Why Generating Subscribers Can Help Grow Your Blog
Conveying The Message To Generate Subscribers
How The Subscribers You Generate Can Be Your Advocates
These 4 subheadlines are cohesive to the main headline and to each other which keeps the flow of the article and at the same time gives search engines the idea of what your topic is about.
Meta Description with Keyword
Another way to get the attention of search engines is through the Meta Description. This is a 160 character snippet that gives a summary of what the blog post is about.
So let’s say that you’re looking for the best social share buttons for blogs.
You put in the search box of Google and Voila you get a list of sites geared towards social share buttons for blogs.
Right below the keyword, you’ll see a summary of what the site is about.
That my friends is the meta description that the search engine pulled from each site.
Is it a Google ranking factor?
Although you still see Meta Descriptions when you do a google search they haven’t been ranking factors since 2009.
But even though their not ranking factors you also still see social media and bookmarking sites using them which still gives your blog visibility to your audience.
How do you include them into your blog posts?
There are quite a few free SEO plugins you can use to include them. I use the All In One SEO Pack and with it you can add the SEO title, meta descriptions, keywords and more.
Images With Keywords
Let’s be honest…
You love it when a blog post has images on it.
And guess what?
Your readers also love it as well. Images gives your blog post life in and of itself. It’s a great way to attract more readers, especially your target market.
Don’t you hate it when the entire blog post is text based? It’s not attractive to me and I’m quite sure that it’s not to you. Yes we all should use our imagination and focus on the messageof the post, but also you make a better connection with your readers through images.
So there are a couple of things you need to know about images
It triggers and engages your reader to click on your post more so
These images are used in OpenGraph and Twitter Cards, meaning it brings your blog post out even more on social sites like Facebook and Twitter.
In regards to in crafting SEO Friendly Blog Posts you also want to add your keywords to each image you add to your blog posts.
Why?
You want search engines like Google to know what the images are about. There are two areas you want to make sure that you add your keywords
The Filename of the Image
The Alt Tag
Remember when it comes to search engines, you want to be as descriptive of what the post is about by using related keywords in different areas of your blog.
If you’re buying stock images, you want to make sure that you’re changing the filename to the related keywords you’re using within the post. If you haven’t been doing this, then make sure you go back to your old posts and change this.
The Alt Tag is important. If for whatsoever reason the image can’t be displayed to the visitor, you’ll at least have the Alt Tag, which also is the related keywords you use for the text. In this sense the user and the search engine will have an idea of what the image and post is about.
Permalinks
If you’re new to wordpress blogging the Permalink is the actually web address of each of your blog post.
What’s important is how each of your permalink are structured.
Adding keywords to your permalinks are another important area. You have a choice of different structures of how you want your permalink to appear.
Now although you can change the permalink structure anytime you want, be warned that your traffic can drop dramatically which will result in your visitors to run into 404 errors. Best thing to do is to warn your visitors and use a 301 Redirect plugin to correct those 404 errors.
I’ve made the mistake of changing my permalink structure which lead my visitors to 404 errors as well as pissing off some bloggers who shared their links on my blog. To fix this, I use Change Permalink Helper plugin to redirect all my old permalinks to my new permalink structure.
So when it comes to permalinks structure I changed it to “Post Name” within wordpress which enables the permalink to be shorter and gives me the option to include the keywords in the address.
To do this go to Settings>Permalinks
Change it to “Post Name” Option
With this is mind, it makes your URL not only SEO friendly but more so User Friendly which is a plus to search engines now days!
Internal And External Links
When it comes to boosting traffic to your blog, one major goal that you want to accomplish is to have different sites within your niche, especially authority sites that get a lot of traffic, link to yours.
Why?
It all goes back to getting social proof!
Usually when people stop by your blog, one of the things they’re looking for is social proof from others. That is, are people engaging on your blog, or do you have testimonials of different people giving you validation?
With this builds trust among your visitors, and in a lot of cases gives them the reason to comment, share your posts, or even subscribe to your blog.
With search engines it’s no different. The fact that other blogs are linking to yours will help them decide if they’re going to put you higher in the hierarchy on their SERP (Search Engine Results Page).
When you have external inbound links on your blog related to your niche, it’s going to carry much more SEO weight than a regular internal link that points to a blog post you did.
Besides that, using relevant internal links and external links within your blog post definitely helps to get organic traffic. Here’s short definition of each
Internal Links – Are permalinks that point to posts or page within your blog site
External Links – Are links you point to blogs or static websites outside of your blog or site. An external inbound link are those sites outside of your blog that links to your blog.
The caveat with external links, internal links and external inbound links is that you want those sites to be relative to your blog topic, valuable to your niche readers, and search engines must deem them as worthy.
Conclusion
Although SEO isn’t as powerful as it was 3 years ago, it’s still relevant today.
Why?
Because there are still inquiring minds that use search engines like Google to look for sites that can answer their most pressing questions.
The goal is to make each of your posts as magnetic as you deem. You want to be able to create the type of content that will ring in the minds of your target audience.
Being able to relate well with your audience from the start and providing information that they can instantly use after they leave your blog is priceless.
In summary, besides using keywords, here are 4 important elements you want to focus on and implement for each of your blog posts.
External Inbound Links
Brand Visibility
Create Useful Content
Increase of Social Singles (Shares, Likes, Comments, mentions, etc.)
Neil Patel goes more into detail about the subject of the SEO Traffic Trends you want to start implementing that will currently keep you generating traffic.
Now It’s Your Turn
SEO is a great way to get free organic traffic from search engines. As I said before, it has changed and it’s not as convoluted as it was in years past.
Much has change for the better and this change has made it fair for the entrepreneur/solopreneur and most importantly for your targeted traffic.
So with that said, was this information helpful? How have you been implementing SEO? Do you make an effort to make your Blog posts SEO friendly? Do you feel like you don’t need SEO?
Please leave your comments below and share this post with your friends. I look forward to hear from you!
