Over
80% of blogs stagnate with no traffic and few readers but the
difficulty often lies with how people are invited to participate.
Simply
having one doesn’t make it produce results.
What
are the most efficient ways to get blog posts read?
- Sharing on social media
- Using an email list to distribute new posts
- Google or Facebook advertising to drive awareness
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Using
ALL
of these options is perfect, but if you can only choose one, then SEO
gets vote every time.
If
you have a few hours to put in, here are THREE
WAYS to change your
WordPress blog (or website) into a search-friendly traffic generator.
1.
Install a good SEO plug-in.
My favorite free SEO solution is WordPress
SEO by Yoast, which makes it simple as red light, yellow light,
green light. Pretty obvious, right? But remember that setting up it
isn’t useful in and of itself – and many bloggers stop at this
first step. Its real power lies in understanding how to employ it
properly and decide the right keywords.
2.
Do keyword research.
Head over to the Google Keyword
Popularity Tool and devote some time in keyword research to
comprehend which keywords drive the most traffic. The trick with
keywords is to never presume you know which ones are best; ALWAYS
research to make sure you are using popular keywords that best suit
your product, service and/or blog topic.
If
you use localized keywords for your SEO efforts – such as “az
life coach” or “life coach in phoenix” rather than just “life
coach,” you are much more likely to rank well – with the extra
advantage of landing more targeted readers. This is particularly
significant if you are a local business.
I
advocate creating a free account on AdWords (or log-in to your
account, if you have one), then search for the keywords you think are
most likely to be searched. Adding your city and state will give you
local search results to review, plus some great thoughts for blog
posts that fit what people are seeking. Using the keywords you put
in, Google will bring up a list of keywords actually searched the
previous month. I prefer to export them to Excel, get rid of needless
columns, rank them from most to least popular, then save the document
for easy reference later.
3.
Choose one keyword, then incorporate it in your post permalink, title
and first sentence.
If you have WordPress set to name the page URL as your post name
(settings> permalinks> post name), this will automatically put
the keyword in your post URL – also called the permalink. This is a
vital component for SEO success.
Then,
just use the default text for the “SEO title” field at the bottom
of the page (which is your title plus the name of your blog), and
copy the first sentence of the post into the “Meta Description”
field. If good writing dictates NOT using the keyword in the first
sentence (which happens frequently but is not optimal), then paste in
the first blog sentence that DOES have the keyword in it, or write
one that uses the keyword and describes the post in a way that people
would like to read it. Put the keyword in the “Meta Keywords”
field, and then you are all done.
SEO
magic occurs when
you
spot one keyword to
focus on, then put it in the trifecta of permalink, page title and
page description.
Ensure
that keyword is incorporated in the body of post a few times, as
related and appropriate, hit publish and you are good to go.
One
last note – Be
certain and offer NUMEROUS WAYS for readers to subscribe. If you
can’t convert them to subscribers via email or RSS and/or they
aren’t seeing your new posts, odds are good they won’t think to
revisit your site. Your SEO may bring them to your blog the first
time, but it may not bring them back. For more : Web Development Melbourne
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