So how to make clients find your business online? It goes without saying that your website must be popular. Our team conducted an independent investigation and now we are happy to share the most effective ways to improve your blog SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Using the following techniques will inevitably lead to more Google love and as a result more traffic. These SEO tips will be most useful for start-up projects and beginner bloggers. If you are the owner of a popular and hyped website, check if you use all the methods out there. Maybe some of them are worth adding to your skill-set!
I. Google Tools
1. Google Analytics
It is strongly recommended to you as a blogger or just a site owner to create a Google Analytics account for your site because it allows you to see what works and what doesn’t. You can just see your weak points and advantages. This way, you can see what exactly you should focus on. Among other things, this free tool allows you to identify the main sources of your blog traffic.
The main things why you may want to use Google Analytics for:
- Visits
- Visit Duration
- Bounce Rate
- Traffic Sources
- Popular Content
Check out the video which explains how to actually use Google Analytics:
http://youtu.be/2Mkpzxar1MQ
2. Google Keyword Tool
Google Keyword Tool is very useful when you are about to create a post for your blog because it shows you if it’s worth it. In other words, if there’s enough people searching for the content you want to create. Plus the odds are that your topic is actually on demand, but you just use the wrong keywords for your post. So, it helps to fit the bill properly, if you know what I mean. 🙂
Just to give you a general idea of how it works, use the step-by-step instruction below:
- Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
- Type your keywords in the Word or phrase text field. For example: blog seo
- In the left-hand column, select the Exact parameter and uncheck the other boxes
- Hit Advanced Options and Filters if you want to run a research for a specific country, language, etc.
- It is set to the USA by default.
- Hit the Search button.
That done, you should have a result that is similar to the one below (click to zoom, dude 🙂 ):
If you have just started your blog, it is preferable to select keywords with low competition (so called “long tail keywords”). In numbers it would be something around 1000-5000 searches per month but the exact amount depends on your industry.
And one more thing that you should take into consideration is search scope. If you just want to offer your products or services for a specific country, you need to make sure that you pay attention to the amount of local searches that your keyword can potentially generate per month (Local Monthly Searches). Ignoring the factor can cost you success and money.
3. Google Alerts
Google Alerts is such a simple and user-friendly tool that it requires no instructions for using it. You can just create an alert to get notified via email each time the keyword or phrase you specify gets published on the web. For example, if you are a web design company you may want to use phrases like “create a unique logo” or “create a website design”. So, every time you get an email that somebody used those words on the Web you can contact that person directly (if possible) and offer your services. In case offering services is not an option (e.g. the author just published an article about that topic), you can just leave a meaningful comment. That’s a good idea as well because you’ll be getting more links from relative pages.
Also, it is important to add your company name or domain to Google Alerts to see what people say about you. Doing that you will be able to thank or respond to your critics. In other words, Google Alerts makes it possible to do reputation management as well. And that is surely something you need. As a matter of fact, you need to ensure that there’s no negative info about your company on the first page of Google’s SERP (search engine results page) when you search for your brand name in Google (and Bing for that matter).
A list of Google Alerts entries may look as follows (click to zoom):
4. Google+
The Google+ social network and the Google+ button are in some way similar to FaceBook and the FaceBook Like button. And that’s no surprise because Google+ is an answer to Facebook. They just want their own piece of the social networking pie. 🙂 Since Google+ belongs to Google, we can expect more influence of this network in terms of SEO. That is why Google+ is a must have for each blogger who doesn’t want to be left behind. So, make sure to use it in your overall SEO strategy.
II. Be Social
It is obvious that if you want to improve your blog SEO, you need to become very popular or at least noticeable in your industry. People should talk about your blog because of its usefulness (create amazing content). The easiest way to achieve it is being active on social networking sites. Make as many useful acquaintances as possible. Mix up with leaders in your niche. Be helpful, comment, answer questions and have a challenge (something that you want to achieve with your site)! The following practical tips will help you implement this strategy (at least they’ll get you going):
1. Participate in Your Industry Communities
So we need future clients and partners to discover our blog. Let’s fish in the pond that is full of fish! Participate in the communities where your potential customers already gather. There is a plenty of such portals in any industry. You can find them with the help of Google and simply communicate. For example, for the WebDesign Bureau (our blog), portals about Joomla, WordPress and osCommerce would be useful.
2. Answer Questions on Q&A Websites
Dedicated forums plus special sites like Yahoo Answers are used for asking different industry related questions. We suggest you to provide detailed answers regularly and the number of grateful people will increase. Fill in your forum profile with the information about you and your business for promotion. Add your blog URL with a slogan or a brief project description in the signature.
While promoting your site in forums and Q&A sites, don’t overdo with links to your own site. Leave a link in the body of your message only if it addresses the question asked. So, your link should be relevant but not just out of the blue. 🙂
3. Send a Challenge in Your Comments
Personal vision is an essential part of a real professional. Do not hesitate to disagree in your comments to any article with incorrect or inaccurate information. It is important to provide detailed arguments and reasons. Blog owners appreciate high quality comments. Your original opinion and your blog will be noticed. It would be very useful to create a high quality blog article as a response to the one you disagree with and provide the URL in your comments. Of course, if you like some post do not forget to say thank you.
4. Social Networking and Sharing
You have found new friends, helped someone with your answer – your blog SEO got improved. Do not forget to remind people about yourself. The best way to strengthen relations is to add visitors to your friends or create a fan group. After that you must regularly post new articles and links to interesting materials of your blog in all most popular social networks like FaceBook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter. It is also recommended to participate in social sharing communities like Reddit and StumbleUpon.
5. Guest Blogging
Write articles for similar (relevant) blogs and accept posts from freelance authors. Make sure that the SEO parameters of the blog you are creating an article for are good. Otherwise you will just waste your time. Keep in mind that your post must be outstanding to get attention and traction.
6. Connect Your Accounts to Your Blog
Blog SEO loves interaction and it is strongly recommended that your YouTube channel, FaceBook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, Blogger and other accounts cooperate with your blog. You need to put links from one to another. For example, put a link in your YouTube video description to your facebook company page, etc.
III. Your Website
Now, I would like to talk about internal blog SEO (aka on-page SEO). Using Google Tools and being social will not bring much success if the blog itself is not optimized. Let’s see what can be done:
1. Excellent Website Design
Even before starting your blog SEO improvements, make sure that your blog is well-designed, easy to navigate and find necessary information. The visitor will not stay for a long time on your website if he does not like it.
2. Back-Linking Licensing
All blog posts must be perfectly illustrated. If you create clipart yourself, do not forget to allow your readers use it with mandatory linking back to your source article. It will be an additional plus to your blog SEO. In Google Images search, you can locate the illustrations similar to the one you have created to see who is using it. To do it, hit on the image and on the next page hit Similar images in the right column.
Most likely the majority of sites use your images without providing links to your blog. But they would be happy to do it if you ask them. Plus after all that DMC thing people are eager to get rid of anything that can cause issues for their sites.
3. RSS and Newsletter Sign-up
Make sure that there is an RSS icon on a visible spot of your blog. The same applies to your newsletter sign-up form. These tools are used to remind your audience about interesting posts on your blog. Studies prove that people check their email on a very regular basis and that would be stupid to ignore that.
4. Ask Questions
Be interested in your readers’ opinion. Ask them to leave comments, take part in polls and surveys. Polls could be easily created in your WordPress admin panel and a good free survey tool can be found in Google Documents => Create => Form.
5. Links to Related Posts
You visitors should stay on your blog as long as possible. Other than just really high quality content, you can do it with the help of appropriate WordPress plugins that allow showing relevant posts after the one you just read. Or simply link to interesting articles of your blog during post writing. If you do that in the correct way, the user will click on a relevant blog pot link and keep on reading. In an ideal world that should continue endlessly. 🙂
In Conclusion
Finally I would like to warn you of using spam, submitting your blog link without relevant answer, being too emotional or impolite and speaking off-topic. These inappropriate techniques is a surefire to destroy your reputation and reduce your blog SEO in general.
