Bloggers usually begin a blog because they love writing. And although some like to remain incognito and keep their blogs somewhat private, most want their writing to be read. With such a vast online world, if you want to be found, you will need traffic to your blog. Getting traffic requires search engines to find your blog by having strong SEO (search engine optimization). This means you will need to create posts with specific keywords and keyword phrases.
How Get More Traffic to Your Blog With Keyword Phrases
Step 1: Find a Keyword Phrase
Take the time to feel out what kind of post you want to create. Think about writing posts not only that you enjoy, but also that may be helpful to your readers. Find a strong keyword phrase and put it to work in your post. It should be a phrase that a good number of people are searching for. You can try using a keyword tool like Market Samurai or Wordtracker to help you out.
Step 2: Create an Outline for Your Blog Post
When you have an idea for your blog post, start creating your outline. Be sure your title contains your keyword. You also want your post to deliver on the promise of that title. It’s a good idea to include your keyword in at least one header tag (H1,H2), but you need to make sure you don’t repeat your keyword so much that search engines flag you for spamming. Please see my post on how you can use your content to connect with your readers.
Step 3: Write High Quality & Evergreen Blog Posts
Once you have a solid outline, you can sit down and get your post completed quickly. Don’t worry too much just yet about your keyword phrase, just let your ideas pour into your writing. Stick to your topic and make sure to refrain from being too wordy. You’re writing for people first and foremost, search engines second. When you are done, read your work. Ensure that you have the keyword phrase 2 to 3 times. Avoid “stuffing” your article with a specific keyword. Use a thesaurus if you need help finding similar words. If you have WordPress, try using the Yoast SEO plugin, it’s a great help when checking your work! Evergreen content is content that will remain relevant for a long time.
Step 4: Add Images
Always add at least one image to your blog post. It should be an image that is relevant to the content, naturally, but ensure your keyword is in the alt image tag and image description. You’ll see where to put these when you click on the button to edit the image in WordPress. Another reason to add a description and tag is that search engines can read text, but not images. So by doing this, you give the search engine something to read.
Step 5: Add Links
When you create links within your post to other posts on your blog, you create a natural structure which search engines LOVE. You also add value for you readers by pointing them to other information that they’ll benefit from. But as with anything, too much is not a good thing. When you overdo your internal links, However, it may appear suspicious to Google and could even get you pushed down in the search results. You want to link to one or two other sites that add value for your readers.
Now, let’s talk about longtail keywords. Longtail keywords will help you be more specific with your writing. Using a keyword in the title of the post (and strategically throughout), you’ll have a greater chance at ranking well in the search engine results.
There are some terms related to SEO that are good to know, if you don’t already. I have compiled a glossary of the most common SEO terms. Take a look:
- SERPS: This stands for “search engine results pages”. These are the pages you see after you type in a search phrase into Google or other search engines. They’re the results of your search. Your goal is to be as high up in the SERPS as possible for any search phrases associated with your blog.
- Meta tags: Meta tags are words that appear in the html code for a page, but do not appear on the page itself. They tell search engines specific information about that page. The most common meta tags are for description (of the page), keywords, and author.
- Title tags: These are the words that appear in the tab or bar at the very top of your web browser. They are the “title” of the page that a user will see when they look at the top of their browser.
- Alt image tags: The alt image tag provides the “alternative text” for an image. Since search engines can’t read an image, you should always provide some text that describes the image. It will show up if the image can’t be displayed and will also show if someone mouses over it.
- Hyperlinks: A hyperlink is a link you can click on that connects one place to another either on the web or even within a document, such as a slide show. Hyperlinks can be attached to text or images.
- Anchor text: This is the clickable text in a hyperlink. Bloggers typically use keywords that describe the linked post as their anchor text, which can help with ranking higher in the SERPS.
- Internal links: These are links from one page on a blog to another. The opposite is an “external link” which involves linking to a page on another website. Both types of links are important for SEO.
- Longtail keywords: A longtail keyword is a search phrase that consists of 2 or more words. Usually, the longer the keyword phrase the more specific the information is that the searcher is looking for. In general, it is easier to rank for a longtail keyword since it will have less ‘competition’.
- Keyword density: Keyword density is a measure of how many times a specific keyword appears on a page in relation to the number of words on the page. If the keyword density is a high percentage, it can be a warning sign to Google that the page is low quality or spam.
- Organic traffic: The free traffic you get naturally from search engines and other directory listings is referred to as organic traffic. The opposite is paid traffic, such as the people who arrive at your site by clicking on one of your ads on another site.
- Spider: Also referred to as a ‘crawler’ or ‘robot’, spiders are software programs which the search engines use for finding and indexing all the pages and websites on the internet. Spiders follow links from one page to another and will revisit sites, indexing new pages as it goes.
As you can see, these are some great tools to help you get the inside scoop on the traffic to your blog. Using insights like these can help you to write better for your readers. Not only that, you will feel better knowing that what you are writing is going to be useful – and beneficial – to those searching for it! And that’s a win-win.
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