SEO For Your Blog
Inbound marketing and creating a powerful online presence is your ability to close the gap between you and your potential clients. You have a website, that is great. You have a blog, that's even better. The question now is, how effective is your SEO for your blog?
SEO stands for search engine optimization and basically means how well the search engines can read your blog and how easily your targeted customers can find you through search engines. There are several components of SEO but for now we will focus on choosing keywords for your blog.
What Is A Keyword?
Choosing keywords can be tough and so we are totally clear let's just take a minute to discuss what keywords are and how they are used. Let's just say you have a bicycle shop in Atlanta, Georgia. When you set up SEO for your blog, what you want is for people in Atlanta to be able to find you when they search on the internet.
So let's take a moment and imagine that you were in Atlanta and you were looking for a new bicycle. What would you type into the search box in Google? Maybe something like "bike shops in Atlanta". What you would expect to come up in search would be all of the bike shops in your area. You find one, usually one of the first 3 on the page, and then you visit the website.
The keyword (or phrase as they most likely are) in this case is "bike shops in Atlanta". Before you go keyword crazy though and think you've found it, you want to check it out in Google Keyword Tool or some other keyword research tool.
Using Google Keyword Tool
Now that you have some idea of what you think people are looking for to find you, it's time to do a little more digging. SEO for your blog is a very important part so just "assuming" anything is not a good idea. So to test it, enter Google Keyword Tool.
Once you pull it up try typing in your keyword phrase in the box on the top of the page. At the bottom of the page you will see results of your search. It will tell you how many estimated people are searching for the term, and then the "competition" or how many other people just like you are using the term.
It is a common mistake to see a word that is highly searched and choose it for your keyword right away thinking that will yield you the best results, but the truth is, it is more important to pay attention to the competition. What you want to do, unless you have a powerhouse blog, is to choose keywords that have high number of searches and a low amount of competition. This way you will have a greater chance of getting on the first page in search.
Who Are You Trying To Reach?
The more you begin to understand your target market (aka the people who want to buy what you are selling) your keywords will get better and better. Doing a little research to understand the demographics of our market will help to bring those targeted (buying) customers right to us.
SEO for your blog is not that d but choosing keywords is a great place to start and if you can get that right then you are on your way to attracting traffic that WILL convert!
Having trouble with your SEO? Email us at elizabeth@assistsocialmedia.com we can set up a consultation to help get you on your way. Get it but need a little more? Sign up to receive all our SEO goodies delivered straight to your inbox!
|
Share the love
|
free social media tips to build your business online.
|
[...] domain that give you the maximum benefit in terms of search include judiciously including a keyword or two in your title in a way that sounds [...]
Thank you Elizabeth. As a person who's just starting out on the very bottom in his attempts to get involved in affiliate marketing, I have been struggling to make heads and tails of terminology. Plenty of people are talking about optimization but few have gone to the ground level and defined the basic terminology as you have here. I knew about key words but I didn't really know how to identify which ones would be a good focus for me.
One thing I would like to know in any future posts you make would be how many key words to focus on. Is four key phrases too much?
[...] SEO keyword research is the very first step you have to take to get your website in place for your ideal readers and [...]
This is a good post but I think a link to the tool would help more. It is a great tool to help people out.
http://www.googlekeywordtool.com/ there it is and you’re right.. I should have had it linked in the article! I went back and fixed that! thanks for the heads up Larry!
This is a great post about SEO, very helpful!
[...] bang for your social media buck, including introductory SEO tips you can use on your blog post, keyword selection, and use of tags starting [...]
Woohoo Thanks Pauline !!!
[...] I sit down to write a new blog post I research keywords that are relevant to the subject matter. It’s as easy as using Google keyword tool, typing in [...]
I love your SEO tips. This is something I'm trying to get better at for myself AND my clients.
it just talk studying.. if i can help you let me know..;)
Thank you for the tip on choosing keywords with low competition to achieve better rankings, explains why I wasn't seeing the same results with my second site that I had (fluked) with the first one!
you’re welcome sweetie!
Okay, I admit it, I hate keyword research. I avoided it for a long time because I find it boring and somewhat hard to wrap my head around. I just want to write! But, I must say that once I started paying attention to it, it made a huge difference in the number of people who were finding my blog. Thanks for the good tips!
You don’t like it way.. It’s how I started my first business. Jennifer I wanted to get first place in google and beat the big companies in organic search.. boy oh boy was it a great feeling to muscle them out of the way!
Excellent advice on keyword and Google Keyword Tool. I have gotten pretty good at searching thanks to Tara, Kim and others in the You Can Do group. I admit, originally I believed that the higher the competition the better…..but I learned otherwise and it just makes so much sense. I've even managed to get some of my posts up on the first page of Google using better, more specific keywords. I know as I do this more I will only get better.
oh you will .. that is how I had to run my first company.. getting the best keywords and knowing where I could Squeeze in.. after I realized that you get the ones that aren’t so hard.. you can get those that are..;)
Great tips….something I always to to work on and improve!
Thanks for the tips on keywords. I find myself intrigued by keywords and how people search for certain things. Love it!
This is an area that I need to work on. it seems so technical but I know it's critical to being found here in cyberspace! Thanks for all the great tips!
it’s not really techy because id it was.. I couldn’t do it LOL but it does take study.. and That’s really where you learn SEO tips!
Great tips and always learning something new about SEO to implement.
it’s a big thing.. I ran my first company staying on top of seo and using social media to market it .
Great post!. I am also using Google Adwords keyword tool to search for keywords for my blog.
great lorii that will get you the traffic you want !
This is a topic I still struggle with at times! Knowing what the keywords are seems easier than using them appropriately! Thanks for sharing your wisdom!
Great tips — without a plan,plan to fail!
Great information on keywords! Loved, loved it! Thanks.
Thank you so much for sharing this article on keywords. It is still a mystery for me at times. Your info makes it much easier to understand and use.
well anytime you need help let me know.. we can work on it..;)
Thanks for the great tips about SEO and keywords! There seems to be so much to learn and I appreciate all that you teach us!
I’m so glad it helped Sherie, I built a business using SEO and social media only in 2003.. it’s still the best marketing around.
Great insight and demonstration of how to find my keywords; thanks! I will surely use it.
Olga I’m so glad that the article helped you! SEO is so important to getting the eyes to your blog that will be most interested in reading what you have to offer and get you on the path to success !
For sure, choosing the right keywords is one thing… deciding on your ideal client is another… often the difficulty is to narrow down because it just seems as if you have something for everybody! I know, I've done that myself… narrowing and niche are important elements to a successful SEO ranking! great job!
You are so right! pick your niche and then own it and you will own that topic in search and get that traffic you are most interested in !SEO for your blog can really help you grow and get that target traffic that you are hoping for!
Great information. So many people think it's just a matter of picking a "good" keyword, but there's much more to SEO than that.
Thanks Marie! Yes there’s a lot to learn.. I’ve studied it for 10 years and it’s complex.. and something you have to work at all the time to stay on top!
Thank you for the helpful information!!
Thanks For Stopping by..;)
Great blog. Thank you for all the useful information.
Thanks for reading our Post Maggie!
thanks for the tips..;)
thanks doll!
[...] ability to help your website rank even higher with search engines or a little something called SEO. Almost half of internet searches a day are people looking to buy products and services. [...]