Why do people blog? Most likely, they think they have something important or interesting to share. But what’s the point if no one reads it? Anyone can write a blog but few will find it. Word of mouth only goes so far and the lucky few whose blogs go viral, well, they’re just lucky.
If your blog is more than just a hobby—if you want to make money from blogging—driving traffic to your blog is critical. Getting people to your blog requires the same tactics as getting people to any website: SEO.
How to Use SEO to Bring Traffic to Your Blog
1. Know Your Audience
Most bloggers write for a specific niche. In any niche, there are keywords that bring high traffic to the blog and can lead to a page one ranking. And that, of course, is the goal! Get your blog to page one and you’ve made it!
2. Identify Those Niche Keywords
Do your keyword research. Find out what keywords people are searching on and how competitive they are. Don’t skimp on this step—this is an important foundation for SEO.
3. Write For Your Readers, Not the Search Engines
Contrary to what you may have heard, your readers are your first consideration, not the search engines. If you’re thinking primarily about writing “search friendly” content, you risk alienating your readers. Once you’ve identified your niche keywords, you can quite naturally incorporate them into your blog without sacrificing the quality of your writing.
Bonus: Your keyword-rich blog is more search friendly!
4. The Two Sides of SEO
Onsite SEO is responsible for about 30% of your rankings. That means priming your website for the search engines. There are many resources on the web that explain the basics of onsite SEO. That’s actually the easy part. Off-site SEO is all about backlinks, which are absolutely critical for rankings and traffic. Offsite SEO starts with solid keyword research. Then, you need to work on getting links from other websites that have content similar to yours. This is not a simple task. These other websites/bloggers want top rankings on the same keywords as you.
5. How Can a Blogger Get Links?
If you’re a blogger with a limited budget (or no budget at all), hiring a SEO firm is probably not an option. What you can do is this: write great content. Use your talents, creativity, originality, everything you’ve got to make your content stand above the others in your niche. Believe it or not, even your competitors will link to your blog if your content is stellar.
This article is written by Adam Stetzer, Ph.D., an avid blogger and President of the HubShout SEO Reseller company. If you wish to write for us, kindly check this.
SEO service will bring high traffic into the blog value and cost of the services of SEO experts. Thanks for sharing this information.
Writing content for audience might not drive huge traffic from Google but it drives huge visitors from social media and other sources. It attracts the blog readers and increases your fame. Thus it make make a way of income to your blog.
As far as SEO goes I would rather SEO a business than a blog. It has to be one of the hardest tasks around.
Writing great copy is a very high part of the keys to success, however finding the motivation to write great copy every time is harder.
Statistically 60 – 80% of blogs created are abandoned within a month. And new blogs grow at a rate of hundreds of thousands a month (although there is no real statistic to track this).
I would love to read about how to find motivation on coming back to your blog day after day. How to keep it fresh and interesting not only for your readers but for yourself.
I am interested to SEO my side.
I agree with your completely that for you to make money with your blog you need traffic and seo is definitely the sure way of getting targeted traffic from the search engines.
First of all, i would like to thank for Adam for sharing SEO strategies for making money data on here. Keyword research plays an major role in the wide and it will bring high traffic into the blog. Thanks a lot for given up here 🙂
First of all we must know that which type of backlink is good or bad for our site before start off-site SEO.
It is very important for me because i am learning about SEO.Thanks adam.
You must know about your audience or market before starting your online blog. You must have a solid plan to implement, only then you can exploit more success and more money as well.
Really awesome point and these are really useful for the strategy of blogging.Keep posting these type of articles
Nice Post,
Whenever any blogger post a new blog he/she wants only two things first lots of reader and second make money with that blog post. You mentioned very well how every blogger can do this with the help of these tips.
One thing is very true which you mentioned in point #3 ""Write For Your Readers, Not the Search Engines"" if blogger will write and post a blog post form the niche of their readers then it will give much positive result for that to him/her.
Nice intro to SEO. I agree that most of your SEO work is in acquiring quality back links.
It's quite important to know your audience,and to respect their point of view.
Thanks for the post Adam. About 60% of my blog's traffic came from search engines. I'm not an SEO expert nor a good writer but I've learned from reading some blogging and SEO tips such as this post.
nice pointing view Adam Stetzer .every point is very interesting to read.keep sharing 🙂