Heard of SEO optimizing your blog post? I am pretty sure you had unless you are like my grand-aunt who lives in a very small town where internet is limited to the local internet café. Then again, if you are like her, you most probably would not be reading this article anyway. But for the benefit of all, let’s define what SEO optimizing a blog post is, for the laymen. 🙂
SEO stand for Search Engine Optimization, which like the name suggests, is the art of achieving a high ranking position for a webpage in a search engine’s search results. It’s an art because it requires an understanding of how readers search for information and subsequently, with this knowledge, increases the likelihood that a webpage or a website can come up among the top few sites in the relevant search engine results page. This in turn will generate traffic to the site, which is ultimately the site owner’s goal.
But does landing on a higher ranking really generate more traffic? Well, researches had found that over 94% of uses of Google‘s search engine clicked on a first page result and that less than 6% actually clicking to the second page and selecting a result displayed there. So this leads us to the next question of how to optimize SEO for a blog post.
Tip 1: SEO keyword Research
SEO keywords are those words that search engine users type in to look for information. So if you use these keywords appropriately in your posts, it is a matter of time before your posts will climb up the search engine ranking ladder. One of the ways to search for these keywords is through Google Keyword Tool. Type in a keyword that you plan to include in your post and this free tool will generate information like alternative keywords, their respective competitiveness and how often these keywords were used in searches. Try to look for those keywords that have low competition and high number of searches and include them in your blog post.
Tip 2: Keywords for Tag or Blog Title
Similarly to the above, there are certain tools that will help you in deciding on what to put as your tags and blog post titles. One such popular tool is Google Insights, which is web-based and what it does is to make a popularity comparison between the keyword that you typed in with other similar keywords. For example, if you are unsure whether to use the phrase “tips for blog” or “blogging tips” as your title, just key them in Google Insights and it will show you which is a more popular search keyword and thus, a better phrase to use in order to increase your blog post’s SEO ranking.
Tip 3: Excessive Advertising
Having loads of advertising links or pop-ups on your site as well as in your blog posts tend to tell the search engine crawlers that your main (and probably the only) intention for your blog is to make money and this won’t go well with the crawlers. They generally will associate this with low quality content and may not include yours on their search pages. So do go slow on the advertisements.
Tip 4: Create a Niche Blog/Post
This is easier said than done. But if you have a certain skill or talent or service that not many others have or can’t find on the internet, then you are well on the way to create a niche blog. It could be anything from parenting advices to some health solutions and web hosting related resources. All you need to do now is write more such unique posts and you will be able to find your posts being picked up by search engines fairly quickly. Search engines just love unique and niche blog articles!
SEO optimizing your posts may not sound too difficult but it is indeed pretty hard work as there are lots of researches to be done. Alternatively, you can hire a professional to help you. But a word of caution here. If you plan to engage a professional or pay a premium to a site that claims to be able to guarantee you the top spot on popular search engines like Google and Yahoo, please think twice. No one can guarantee such and chances are they may be scammers!
Great tips! But we absolutely can't forget to focus on the readers and not SEO when we do it. Yes it is good to optimize it for better rankings but when we start to sacrifice the real value of our articles for SEO, that's when the problem comes in. We have to have a good balance of these things.
Thanks for the great work here.
Not only search engine even I don't (and hope many other people also) don't like sites which is full of Ads, especially which have ads in between content and popup..
I totally agree with the point of the keywords…..
I agree with you on this post … especially about the people using to many ads … I realized that most people who blog don't even know the basics about SEO and i kinda wonder what they are trying to do with their blog. I mean if you aren't trying to be found on the internet why do it? I wish i could have all those people read this post to help open up their eyes to the world of SEO
Thanks for the appreciation bro. Yes, there are lots of people who are still not aware about the basics of SEO, am glad this post could be useful to them. 🙂
Though I do not heavily rely on SEO research for my articles, I still feel that these techniques can give me best results.
Not to forget optimizing images used in the articles, because they can also get the traffic.
I realized this when I had tons of traffic directed to my blog and when I have checked it is for the keyword "steve jobs" (and point is my blog is nowhere related to Steve Jobs nor iPhone).
I've just written an aticle about him, that's it 🙂
Cool. Perhaps I should write about Steve Jobs too on my blog… what do you think? Does Steve Jobs have anything to do with web hosting at all?
Write about his new "iCloud" then. 😛
That's a good idea. iCloud is a great storage and cloud computing service!
always keyword research is better way for get traffic from seo.i always prefer to use it 🙂
Keyword research is a vital activity in SEO. No shortcut here. 🙂
I find that choosing the correct niche is very important. For instance, if someone chooses on starting a blog on how to make money online, it is way too competitive and lots of contents had been rewrite multiple times where I feel that I kept stumbling on the same content with a different writing style. I believe if one can find a unique niche that has not been written yet, there are lots of potential over there.
In fact, blog title should be more attractive to the readers and then get high traffic into the blog.At the time, Google is one of the great key word research without any doubt on here 🙂
Absolutely, blog titles are the first thing a reader looks at, so they have to be catchy yet simple enough to get the message across at a glance.
These 4 simple ways can be of a great help to a lot of people like me. I think that you've given everyone a big opportunity to be able to optimize blog posts. Thank you so much for sharing.
You are most welcome! Hope you will come back here for more tips and continue to support HBB. Do remember to drop by 100Webhosting.com if you need to grab a good web host at maximum discount. Cheers! 🙂
nice article i will try to ore focus on niche . i post random things on my blog
I Like the point "excessive advertisements". We should never do over advertisement or heavy SEO. These stuffs are continuous and we need to go slow in particular area to perform better.
You are right. Do not put too many advertisements especially for a new blog or website. Go slow and steady. 🙂