Best Search engine optimization SEO techniques to improve blog traffic
There are so many blogs and SEO companies that you may get confused how to improve SEO and get your content or ad listed for certain keywords. After brief research I found some practical and best search engine optimization techniques to improve my blog traffic. Let's take example of this blog where I wanted to write about best search engine optimzation SEO techinques. I created this blog post to appear as a simple guide for beginners, to be search engine optimized and appear in top google search results for long trail Keywords "Best Search Engine Optimization" and "Search engine Optimization SEO" and short Keywords like "Search Engine optimization", " SEO Optimization" and "SEO". I have described a SEO thumb rule which resulted in getting one of my blog post listed top 50 google search results in 2 days (not this one).
Target audience: I'm assuming that the person who is reading already knows how to setup a blog, play with HTML and write original blog content. Bloggers, SEO Marketing folks and webmasters are likely to benefit from this article.
SEO Optimization Techniques--
1.Research Target Keywords: Before your start writing your content use Google Keyword planner and Google Trends tools to find out:
a)Target Keywords: Identify highly searched short and long keywords with low and medium competition
b)Mix Keywords: Blog content should have mix and match of short keywords and long tail keywords for targeted Keywords acquisition.
Now this should help you to select an appropriate Title for the blog page and must contain target long Tail Key word. Selecting title is very helpful in SEO and considered best practice to have keywords included in the title itself and google also recommends the same.
Below is a snapshot of Google Keyplanner:
Below is a snapshot of Google Trends:
Using data from these two tools one can decide the high search volume and low/medium copmpetetive search keywords that can be used for SEO.
2. Blog Page Structure –Search engine friendly and with no HTML/DOM error.
a) Title - Google uses this for Search engine and it must contain mix match of target Keywords.
b) Meta tag description - It should contain small description of the post which will compel user to click on search link (this is not visible on page but is picked up by Google and shown in google search page to describe a search output). Keyword meta tag is now not used by google to show your content.
Below images can show how search engine reads and display your page like a keyword
3. Content: Make sure your content is original and if you have quoted any content, please don't forget to add external link for reference.Also a great content is informative and media rich so that people actually benefit when they read your content. It should compel them to share, mark it as favourite and guide them to achieve their task. Bottom line is ; do not write out of context content it will increase bounce rate and eventually lower Google ranking of your page or site.
a) Repeat Target Keywords: We need to use target keywords 4-6 times and add other short keywords relevant to content but avoid repeating short keywords too many times otherwise you might be penalized. Long tail keywords are easy to aquire because they are less competitive.Over reapeating keywords may not be very good technique for search engine optimization SEO. Best is to stick to repeat 4-5 times in a medium article and 6-7 times in a long article. You can count how many times I have used my target keywords "Best Search engine optimization" and "Search Engine Optimization" in this blog post. Hope this will help.
b) Link : Try to link few keywords for which we already have existing blog/page/content. Reference to external links must open in a new window. Because if you let your reader go to some other website your page will lose on ranking. Do not let them slip, make them read your content, this will reduce bounce rate. Make sure you have enough call to action items on your page so that when user gets bored, he/she can subscribe, follow, or register on your site. Least you can do is let them know some related content that they can read. There are all links and more link they browse more CTR click through rate is achieved for that page. Remember SEO can be improved if we know how to use links to get more CTR.
c) Image: Image tag must have alt and title content defined and related to content keyword. This will improve SEO for image search.
d) URL: You must keep URL clean and relevant to title of the page. Though it doesn’t affect ranking but if the URL is clean it helps user to click on relevant and readable URL.
e) Submit URL to Google: Though Google Crawlers visit sites quite frequently for new content however it is a good practice to submit new blog post URL to Google manually. You can submit your new URL to Google on this link. You can submit on Yahoo and other search engine as well.
4. Generate backlink (must): If possible share content as a link on highly ranked forums, social site (digg, stumble upon, delicious), email, query sites (ask.com, quora.com). Do not spam. Put rephrased excerpt from the blog post to answer a query and then add link. Wikipedia is a good place to put your content as external link. This is most time taking and spamming will lead to negative SEO. Creating backlinks is the key to get ranked in top Google Searches. Period. There are many good and cheap tricks to create backlink, however stick to good practice so that with age your article with generate good and genuine traffic to your page.
That's all for now. These are simple thumb rule or best Search engiine optimization techniques to improve blog traffic. Other areas can be to have Google + Link on article, Https server, cross blog, create feed.
Above all, make sure your site has a link to your content which can used by Google bot or average to find and crawl. This aritcle is automatically listed in our Geek section of botskool.
Let me know if you have any suggestions for search engine optimization techniques. Best of luck and happy bloggin! :
Cheers
Leave your comments below.