Got Blog SEO? Make Google, Yahoo and Bing Love You

Blog SEO, do you have it? Do you think about SEO for blogs whenever you make a post? If not, you’re likely missing out on a ton of potential internet traffic over time. This is EASY to do, plus valuable info for Indie authors and anyone marketing themselves online.

Seems like everyone has a blog these days, and rightfully so since it’s the best way for perfect strangers from all over the world to find you and your products/ebooks/etc. What percentage of owners really know how to utilize SEO (search engine optimization) to their benefit? Probably not many as there are so many companies charging arms and legs to help small website owners do a better job attracting Google, Yahoo and Bing, and thus all those perfect strangers. They’ve contacted you, right? The companies charging arms and legs to do this for you? Seems like a daily thing for me, we can help your website get more exposure with our proven SEO tips… Oh brother, just another form of spam.

Way, way back in the old days of the internet (a few years ago), that would have been tempting. During my first posts at another blogging site, the phrase stumbling around in the dark was a good way to describe my methods. Blogging was still a new entity and I really had no idea what I was doing. My concept was to get something about my books, anything really, out on the internet. Yes, the posts were always on my subjects of interest, but really it was just about saying something so my voice was happily among the zillions of others speaking to nobody in particular over cyberspace.

Fortunately those days are over. Why? Because the blog SEO secret has revealed itself to me. Now I understand gads more about SEO for blogs and how to say something that will get heard by readers and by, ta-da, search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. It’s a little secret, EASY to do, known by some and not known by many, that will make a huge difference in traffic over time. Here’s what to do before you blog on any subject.

Step 1 – Make a list of potential keywords and phrases that describe your post and what some perfect stranger might potentially type into a search engine. This is where the magic happens. This is the step that separates the wise blogger from the not-so-wise. If you don’t have great keywords targeted to relevant customers, you may as well be blogging offline.

For example, let’s say your specialty is writing novels based on spiritual subjects, and your blog post is about those novels. What are the terms that come to mind, the terms which will get used in the blog heading, the text body and perhaps some images that accompany the post? Spiritual books, spiritual novels, new age books, and new age novels, are a very short list of examples for some terms that describe your subject matter. These all seem like good choices. Could whichever one you choose really make a big difference? The answer will surprise you.

Step 2 – Research those keywords on your list. Google has a great and free program called Keyword Tool External. This is a must, in my opinion, no matter what you’re doing online, whether it’s making a blog post, creating a new website or even coming up with a title for your book. This program will allow you to type in these individual keywords or phrases and get results on which ones are being searched the most and how much competition they have from other advertisers. Ideally, you can zero in on keywords with the maximum number of searches that don’t have high competition from advertisers. Ideally, the right keywords will help thousands of people from all over the world to find you.

Back to our example. Keyword tool external shows these results in Global Monthly Searches and Level of Competition for our search terms:

Spiritual books – 27,100 Global Monthly Searches, average Competition.

Spiritual novels – 3,600 Global Monthly Searches, low Competition.

New age books – 8,100 Global Monthly Searches, low-average Competition.

New age novels – 320 Global Monthly Searches, low Competition.

Metaphysical books – 5,400 Global Monthly Searches, low-average Competition.

This list could be much longer with ideas, but these few are enough to point out how slight variations in wording can result in huge differences in amount of people searching. Even though “novels” is a bit more descriptive than “books,” it seems like a no-brainer to choose “books” in the description than “novels” and to choose “spiritual” followed by “new age” and lastly, “metaphysical” or something like it.

You can play around with the parameters of the Keyword Tool External program and even peruse suggestions that Google will list for you in the results.

Step 3 – Insert the chosen keywords tastefully into everything you write. Put them in your blog’s headline, in the text body, in the categories/labels/tags, even in alternative text for any images you may use to accompany the post. The word tastefully comes to mind as opposed to keyword stuffing, which is overusing them and can get you into trouble with some search engines. Use your keywords without overusing them, keep the reading pleasant. Once in the heading, once in varied ways in categories/labels/tags, once in alternative text and a few times in the text body.

Step 4 – In the future, you should often check which terms people have used to find your blog, assuming the blog host keeps stats for that. Test out those terms by typing the keywords into a search engine like Google, Yahoo or Bing. Scroll through the list until your blog entry comes up, then click on that entry and click on some other links within it. That tells the search engines your listing has quality content which made the searchers happy. If you can do this from locations other than your own home, like when traveling, all the better.

This little tip will work wonders over time.
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