It
will take a while to get a decent amount of traffic from the search engines.
The search engines do not like NEW websites. They like more established sites
that have a lot of people linking to them, hence proving that they are
reputable. This is why getting links from other bloggers, directories, other
web sites that have a good reputation in the search engines’ eyes is very
important. As your blog begins to grow by having more pages and more links the
search engines will begin to send you more and more traffic. This is a good
thing!! But, as I mentioned earlier, they are very wary of new websites – so
time will be your ally when it comes to the search engines.
SEO
Search
Engine Optimization (SEO) is an science/art (depending on who you ask) that
focuses on getting your website or blog to the top of the search engine
listings. Being at the top of Google’s results for any decent keywords can be a
great source of traffic and the greatest part about it is that it is FREE
TRAFFIC!!!
I
am not going to get deep into SEO much here, there are far more thorough books
about it (i.e. SEOBook) but as your blog grows you should try to
learn more about it, as it will only help you by knowing more. Just like most
of the things you will learn while blogging, you don’t need to be an expert at
it – just having a working knowledge will provide great results.
The
thing to remember about the search engines (especially Google) is that they are
trying to create a perfect system where any searcher can find exactly what they
want. Google wants to display the most relevant websites to their searchers.
They will never have a perfect system, but they probably won’t stop trying. If
you can keep this in mind, it will be very helpful when you are trying to
optimize your blog. Don’t waste your time trying to trick them, they will
figure it out and will punish you for it. Just focus on making it very clear to
them what your site is all about and writing great content for your reader and
the rest will take care of itself.
So,
let’s get to some SEO. These are some of the most important (in my opinion)
pieces of SEO that every beginner should know. If you do these right, you
will be much better off than most people who don’t know anything about SEO.
1. Title Tags
This
may be the single most important part of on-page SEO. The title tag of your
website is what shows up in the top of your browser window. It is also one of
the most important determining factors that the search engines use to determine
what your site is about.
In
the above picture you can see that the title tag is “Christian Personal Finance
– Financial help, debt help…” You WILL want to make sure that your title tags
contain the keywords that you want to rank for in the search engines. If your
site is about rock climbing, you will not want to have “welcome to Bill’s blog”
in the title tags. Something better would be “Rock climbing 101 | the best rock
climbing techniques”
2. Anchor Text
Anchor
text – the text that people use when linking. For instance, if I created a link
for a great
search engine you can see that the link will go to Google. “great
search engine” is the anchor text. The anchor text is a big deal, because it
tells the search engines what other sites say your site is about. Google really
places a lot of importance on what words are in the anchor text. Obviously, you
will not be able to control how other people link to your site all of the time.
But, for those times that you can, you should use your keywords when possible.
Linking to other pages and posts on your website, directory submissions, blog
carnivals, and your signature line in forums all may be good places to make
sure you get your keywords in your anchor text.
3. Keyword Research
If
you are trying to get traffic from search engines, it is always a good idea to
know what people are searching for before you start writing. I often use Aaron Wall’s keyword tool and run some keyword
ideas through it to get estimates of how many people are searching for them.
4. Get links
We
already lightly discussed the importance of links coming into your blog. Other
that the great benefit they play in improving your search rankings, they also
send visitors to your site. It is an obvious benefit, but often overlooked by
people focusing on SEO. If you get a link from a blog that gets a lot of
visitors, you could see a huge traffic spike from it. If you get links from
lots of blogs, you could and will see visitors coming from most of them. Maybe
not a bunch, but as you get more and more links, you will see more visitors
coming. The bottom line about link-building is that you have to create
something great that people want to link to. If you can consistently do that,
many other things will fall into place.
11 tools that have helped make it all possible…
Not
all of these tools directly contribute to the bottom line, but each one of them
have been very helpful over the last couple years.
- Google Analytics – which is a wonderful (and free) statistics tool that will help you keep track of your visitors and analyze a lot of data about them. As I mentioned before it now integrates with Adsense to give even more valuable data.
- Semiologic WP Theme – This is the theme I used to use for most of my WordPress sites. It costs about $300 for the full version, but I started with the free version, which I think is far more customizable than the vast majority of WP themes out there already. So if you are just starting out your probably don’t need the full version yet, but eventually it is probably worth considering. For what it has allowed me to do I know that it has paid for itself many times over.
- Google webmaster tools – This will help you see how Google views your blog. They will also let you know if there are any problems with it that you may not be aware of. For me I had some issues that were really hurting my search rankings, but I found out about them and fixed them and voila! All better.
- Aweber Email Marketing Service – I haven’t been using this too long, but if you read anything about internet marketing, you will certainly hear about the incredible value in having an email list. I have been happy with Aweber thus far.
- Google’s Keyword Tool – This is a great tool to get ideas about popular keywords as well.
- SEObook Keyword Tool – I use this to get a ballpark estimate of how many people are searching for particular key phrases.
- SocialPoster – This tool allows you to submit articles to multiple social sites. I used to use it to submit to about the top 5-10 social sites.
- Hittail.com – This one provides ideas for articles based on what you have previously written about and could probably rank for. I just noticed that the free version is gone. If you have a blog that is established it might be worth paying $10 a month for it – I suggest doing the free-trial and see how much it helps you.
- Stock.xchng – The best free stock photography site I have found.
- BigStock - The best cheap stock photography site I have found. They have lots of images that you can get for just about a buck.
- Feedburner – If you have a blog, you will want to burn a feed. Feedburner makes this fun, organized, and easy…
A few more tools that may be worth checking out…
- Scribe SEO Tool for WordPress – I wrote a more thorough review of this tool that the blogging tips subscribers received (you can sign up for free below if interested). But basically, I tried it out and decided not to continue to use it because I thought it was priced a little to high for what I got from it. It can make the SEO process a bit easier, but I just wasn’t sure about spending $27 on it. If they lower the price, I might recommend it a bit more.
- How To Build A Successful Blog Business – I haven’t read this ebook yet, but some of the biggest names in the business have some great things to say about the book.
- Frugal Theme for WordPress – This is another premium theme like Thesis and I haven’t tried it out yet, but it seems to be gaining popularity.
- Yaro Starak’s (and Leslie’s) Become a Blogger Training Course – I haven’t tried this, but have heard good things about it. Yaro is an extremely successful internet marketer and I have learned a whole lot from him. If I were starting out today and could afford the program, I would do it.
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