You’ve just launched a brand new blog, and the search engines have welcomed you with open arms. You’re ecstatic about the idea of having millions of visitors per month discovering your content, but you’ve got one problem. No matter how much content you produce, it’s never enough. You need more. You need to grow and expand your blog’s reach to as many people as possible.
What should you do? How can you rise to the top of the search engine listings?
Luckily, the answer is quite simple. All you need to do is learn a few SEO techniques, implement them on your blog, and watch the traffic flow in.
The Basics Of SEO
SEO, short for “search engine optimization,” is the process of affecting the ranking of a website or a blog in search results. When someone performs a search on a search engine, the results page will typically display blogs or websites along with the search results. These websites are usually ranked according to various metrics, such as the number of backlinks, the amount of content in the website, and the overall popularity of the website.
Search engines will attempt to discover and rank the most relevant content for a particular search query. So if you want to rank your blog in the search engines, you need to make sure that your blog offers the best possible content to search engines. You can do this by following a few simple SEO tips.
Be Careful When Choosing The Name Of Your Blog
Avoid selecting a name that is already taken by another blog or website. There’s a good chance that the owner of the name you choose will try to take you to court, claiming that your use of their name is a form of trademark infringement. Even if they don’t sue you, they might still try to have you removed from the search results. You don’t want to find out too late that the name you chose is already taken, because then you’ll have to find a new blog name as soon as possible. That’s a pain!
Also, make sure that the name you choose hasn’t been trademarked by another website or business. You can check this by performing a trademark search on Google using the name you have in mind. If the results of your search don’t come up with anything, then it’s safe to assume that no one has trademarked the name you are considering.
Create More Than One Blog Version
Instead of just having one version of your blog, with all the same articles published at the same time, try creating several different versions of your blog. Each version should focus on a different topic, but they should all be connected by shared resources, such as the use of the same header images, style sheets, and templates.
This is a great way to increase the exposure of your blog. Instead of having a single post with a handful of links at the bottom, each version of your blog will have a separate post, but they will all link back to the same place. When a potential customer clicks on any of the links in the post, they will be taken to the same place. This means that even if they don’t read the whole post, at least they’ll be guided to your blog’s homepage by a hyperlink in some way.
Use The Right Keywords In Your Headings, Menus, And URLs
Keywords are important because they help people discover your blog content when searching for similar topics. To optimize your blog for the search engines, you need to incorporate the right keywords into the appropriate areas of your site. You can do this by performing a content analysis of your blog posts. For example, if you are writing about web design, you might want to include the keywords “web design,” “Weebly,” “Bluehost,” and “Wordpress” in the headings, subheadings, and even the content of your posts. You can use a free tool like Google Keyword Tools to easily find the right keywords and implement them on your site.
Don’t Forget About The Internets
If you’ve never paid much attention to SEO, you might not know how important the interwebs can be when it comes to ranking your blog. Because Google is the dominant search engine, a lot of people forget that there are other search engines, such as Bing and Yahoo!, that they need to worry about. Make sure that you do your best to get your blog listed on all the major search engines, especially when it comes to highly relevant and popular keywords. If there is any way possible, try to get your blog listed on as many different search engines as you can.
Include keywords in your blog’s URL (uniform resource locator) as much as possible. This will help ensure that your blog will show up when someone types in the keywords you’re trying to rank for. For example, “bluehost coupon” is a keyword phrase that you might want to try to rank for, but “jointheflexbilitycoupon” isn’t because Google doesn’t consider that to be relevant.
Learn From The Pros
There are a handful of people who really know how to optimize a blog for the search engines, so instead of trying to figure it out yourself, you might want to consider hiring a professional. There are a variety of companies that provide SEO services, and if you don’t want to go the DIY route, paying for help might be the best option for you.
Keep in mind that SEO is constantly changing, and mastering it yourself can take a considerable amount of time. Instead of wasting your precious hours trying to learn a complex algorithm, hire an expert who is already familiar with the ins and outs of SEO.
Rise Above The Noise
As mentioned before, SEO is always changing. One of the biggest issues that people face is trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. The good news is that there are always new tactics, strategies, and techniques that can be used to rank a blog. Unfortunately, not all of these methods work for every blog, so you need to find what works best for your site. When doing your research, make sure that you analyze popular blogs in your niche, looking for patterns and ways that they are succeeding in getting their content to the top of the search engine results.
By analyzing these blogs, you can determine what has helped them rise above the competition and what you can do to replicate that success.
Don’t Forget About Link Building
Although SEO is all about making your content findable, it’s not all about getting lots of backlinks to your site. Instead of focusing solely on building backlinks, you should also be thinking about actively seeking out relevant and high-quality external links, or “linkspam.”
Creating high-quality content is essential, but so is building a network of relevant websites and blogs that have a vested interest in promoting your content. If you can get relevant websites to link to you, it will help boost your search engine rankings.
SEO Isn’t Everything
Last but not least, let’s remember that SEO is just one part of a complete online marketing strategy. To truly rank your blog for the search engines, you will need to implement other important tactics, such as pay per click advertising and social media marketing. These are crucial to getting traffic, and once you have a steady stream of traffic, you can then begin optimizing your content for search engines.
Including these important tactics will help you get the most out of your SEO efforts, and put you on the right track to dominating your niche.