How I use SEO to increase my blog traffic

SEO for your blog

Having now been blogging in one way, shape or form now for coming on 7 years (over 5 now on this blog), I have picked up many, many blogging tips along the way, and one of these is for increasing traffic using SEO (Search Engine Optimism) well. Indeed, pre-knowledge of this my blog traffic was, well, a lot smaller than it is now.

I also use the knowledge I have gained of SEO in my other job as a digital marketing manager for a Cloud Communications Company, and have acquired this knowledge through a mix of physical courses, online courses, self-teaching and crucially, through talking and paying attention to web-design types, other bloggers and industry experts, all whilst thirstily soaking up everything they’ve had to say on the subject. 

Knowledge is power, and by using SEO effectively you really can help to increase your blog traffic significantly within the space of a few months. Obviously, the SEO industry updates frequently and certain things change, so as a blogger I try and keep abreast of any news and changes to do with this. Many people think bloggers are people with two much time on their hands churning out nonsense that dissapears into the ether, but it really is a ‘proper’ job, and successful bloggers know that having decent SEO on their blog will bring a great many new visitors and opportunities. 

Here are some ways that I use SEO to increase my blog traffic:

Google Search Console

If you haven’t heard of Google Search Console when it comes to your blog, you are missing out potentially big time when it comes to blog traffic. Google Search Console is a dashboard which keeps track of your site, notes any changes to it and feeds Google info about your site’s identity. How your site appears in search results is also controlled from here. Here’s how to use Google Search Console and the elements that surround it (don’t worry if this seems complex at first, it’s actually relatively simple):

  • Pop on and set up a free account. Then, log in with a Google account.
  • Enter your website URL in the box  and add a property.
  • There are then various verification methods that you’ll be able to see. The easy way of doing this is to verify with Google Analytics (found on the Alternate Methods tab). If your Google Analytics account is setup with the same @gmail.com email, your website will immediately verify.
  • If you don’t verify using the above method, you can download an HTML file and upload it to your site to get verified instead.

 

Once in and verified, head to the crawl tab, which is all about the SEO. Here, you can check how often Google crawls your blog. There is a graph within ‘Crawl Stats’, and this represents when Google is scanning your site and looking for any changes within it. 

Then, check your site map. 

Click sitemaps (also in the Crawl section). You can see here is a sitemap has already been submitted or not. If this isn’t the case you can add one manually. Click on Add/Test Sitemap at the top. Then type in “sitemap.xml” into the box, followed by and clicking ‘Submit’.

Doing this will really, really help with SEO on your blog. 

Use keywords in the right places

When writing on my blog, or updating the company website at work, I always try and select the best keyword and then use it appropriately within the post or page. Use a a keyword ranking tool to select your best site keywords – you can review 11 Best Keyword Rank Tracking Software Tools to help you. You never want to go mad and make your content sound ‘weird’ and unnatural by overuse of a key word, but there are certain places you can and should include your keyword in order to rank well within Google:

  • In the blog post or page URL
  • In the blog post title
  • In at least one subheading within the blog post or page
  • Within the copy (an average of 1.5-2%, although I appreciate this can be hard to measure!)
  • In your image ALT tags

blog SEO

Using SEO and Keywords in conjuntion with PPC (Pay per click)

Paid searches helps to drive relevant and targeted traffic to your website, by showing ads for your business on search engine results pages when users search for related keywords- which is why it’s important to make sure your SEO and keywords for your blog or website are spot on. 

A PPC Agency can drive traffic, leads and revenue to your website within a really short timeframe. Some benefits of this include:

  • Giving you first page exposure on major search engines
  • Sending immediate and consistent traffic to your website
  • Allowing campaigns to be tested and ads to be accurately targeted
  • Optimisation that drive leads or transactions to your site
  • Giving your brand (or blog) large reach and exposure
  • Ensures the ads match relevant search queries
  • Allows for accurate tracking

In addition, the PPC model allows full control of how much you spend on each campaign, so you can decide how much money you want to spend on your blog or website. 

 

Update Archived Content on your blog

It is considered good ‘blogmin’ to keep your archived content up to date. This is great for your blog’s SEO, AND also provides a better navigation and reading experience for any blog visitor. 

When you make a change to a blog post, Google will re-crawl your site to index these changes. Your position in the search engine results often then improves much more quickly than simply waiting for Google to re-crawl.

 When you update an older post focus on the content. Could it be updated it in some way (i.e. a review trip somewhere, has anything changed about the place you visited?) Are the images as sharp as they could be? I’m sure I have several recipe ones still to update even now on this blog! 

 

I hope these tips were helpful, and if I think of anything else I’ll add to this post.

Do you use SEO as well as you could for your blog or website? Let me know in the comments below!

See some of my other posts about blogging HERE

 

*Collaborative post

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