Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short, involves manipulating the content on your website to work with search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing to your advantage. When people use the search engine, they type in keywords and keywords phrases. These questions result in the search engines giving a list of sites that best fit the terms the users typed in.
Ideally, you want your blog to show up high on that list when terms relevant to your niche are knocked in by potential readers.
To make this happen, your blog will need to target specific keywords and phrases related to your niche. You will want to use these words and phrases frequently, but logically, within your content, on meta tags, photos, and more. You want to go overboard and “stuff” keywords into the content. But you will want to make the best use of words and phrases that are related to your niche.
Selecting The Right Words
Choosing keywords to build a blog around isn’t as different as it sounds. Search engines like Google even have programs that can help you select words and phrases that are commonly use by searchers to find information and products related to your niche.
If you’d like a lower-tech way to go, you can ever sit down with a pad and pen and just brainstorm words that fit in with what you do and who you are trying to reach.
To Target your use of keywords for SEO on your blog, consider such things as:
- What You Do
- If your blog will be dedicate to selling a particular affiliate product, you will want to rank high for the brand name, of course. You will also want terms related to it.
- If you make and sell website templates, for example, consider words related to your products that go beyond the brand name.
- “Website themes and templates”, “eCommerce Website templates” and so on might be termed worked into your content on a regular basis.
- Geographical Cues
- Sometimes it can pay to use geographical cues within SEO effects. If you’re a business coach in New York who loves face to face meetings, for instance, chances are you want to pull in highly targeted readers.
- While you might not mind visitors from California to your website, your business would benefit more from visitors from your home state or city.
- With this in mind, temper your keywords with geographical cues when possible.
- When picking terms for SEO purposes, it is often best to have a fairly decent sized list to work with. If it’s your plan to update your blog daily, working only with “eCommerce Website templates” can become highly repetitive too quickly. Just create a well-defined list and work the chosen words into content as much as possible without losing the clarity of your posts.
Why SEO Matters
Taking the time to work an SEO plan into your blogging content is an extra step you probably didn’t count on. It can, however, greatly boost your branding efforts and help launch your sites off on the path to success.
There are a number of reasons why it pays to consider SEO in your overall branding and blog marketing plan.
They include:
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- The potential traffic
- Search engines do provide an outlet for free advertising. When you manage to rank high for your selected search terms, you will gain traffic, which can increase your branding success and even your sales.
- The potential traffic
- The targeted nature of the traffic
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- When people visit your site, you want them to be interest in what you have to offer. It doesn’t matter whether it’s product, service or just information.
- Select the best theme for your website which can you help in come more traffic. Shopify Business idea PrestaShop Templates, and WordPress Project
- If your visitors arrive from related to your niche, they will be more likely to be interest in what you have to sell or say.
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- The Pre-sell factor
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- If a visitor finds your blog because he typed in “web design templates” and that’s your business, that visitor is already buying a frame of mind. This can translate to a near-instant sale if your products suit his needs.
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- Linking
- When you rank high in the search engines, your blog can gain increased publicity from other sites on the internet. The more credibility and ranking you gain, the more likely it is other sites will quote yours and refer to it.
- This can help you increase your branding efforts and enable you to gain even more free recognition for what you are attempting to do.
Related Information: SEO extension
Resources For SEO
Consider using a resource like Google Trends To See What keyword searches are trending and performing detail research on the keywords you are thinking of using.
If you want a place to rank your search engine results, try Google Webmaster to track your site’s search performance. With Google Search Console and browser around for more webmaster resources.
Moz is considered by many experts to be the unlimited SEO toolset, but they have a great learning centre. They are on the pricey end of things, but their features match their prices.
Not only do they have the same features most services have like rank tracking and keyword research. But they also have other features that are extremely useful such as search visibility score.
If you are looking for the one tool that can pretty much do it all. Moz is considere the one to go to.
Content Pitfalls To Watch Out For
Maintaining a blog can take some effort and it is easy to fall into some topic. That can hurt your search engine rankings and even your brand image. Some of the potential traps to watch out for include:
Keyword stuffing
Keywords and phrases are very important for gaining recognition from the search engines. They don’t, however, trump the need for quality in your content. Use keywords for SEO where they naturally fit into content but don’t force them.
Posting For the Sake of Doing So
Remember, you are trying to build up a brand image. This means you want to truly appeal to visitors. The most reliable way to do this is to offer content that will be of interest. Don’t just put anything out there in hopes you will pull in traffic. Take the time to study unique and exciting posts.
It’s enough to skip a few days if you must then to just post for the sake of doing so.
Duplicating Content
Refrain from posting some topics on different pages and blog posts over and over again. Duplicate pages will be find by frequent visitors and they can hurt you in regard to search engine rankings.
“Borrowing” Content
While it is acceptable to quote other sources in your content. Don’t just borrow it without giving credit where it is due. When you quote another site and give credit this creates a link to the original site, which is important. We’ll discuss the reasons for this shortly.
Once you have put together a rough plan for your posts, the search engine terms you’ll use. Your message, you’ll need to start populating your blog with content. The support of a blog can make or break its effectiveness in helping with overall branding efforts.