Writing a blog can be a challenging endeavor. Sometimes just coming up with ideas can be like pushing a boulder up a hill. And once the piece is written, and you sit back, exhausted and sweating from frantically typing, the last thing on your mind is search engine optimization. But the blogging world is getting more crowded every day, and that boulder never seems to get much farther up the hill, does it? But cheer up, Sisyphus. Here are a few SEO Google tips that can help push your blog page to the head of the pack.
1. Do Your Research. You need to find out what exactly your article offers readers, and what words or phrases those same readers might be typing in when they search for articles like yours. But not just general ideas or broad concepts. You need exact phrasings to be able to meet them halfway. Google Keyword Tool is an excellent resource to explore.
2. Narrow Your Research. Pretend your blog article is about shoes. So you enter “shoes” into your keyword research tool, and you find that competition is quite high among the 55 million monthly searches for that particular keyword. One of the most important SEO Google tips to keep in mind is, single word keywords are usually harder to rank for than longer phrases. If you incorporate “shoes” into a more specific phrase that more clearly defines what your article is about (say, “shoes for people with six toes”), then you will not only be able to find a phrase with less competition, but you will be able to meet your target audience more easily, since people searching for that exact phrase will be far more likely to click on your link.
3. Implement Your Research. Make a list of the top five or six phrases you want to rank for, and then open up your article and see where you can fit those keywords into what you have already written. It may take some tweaking to get it to sound natural while still conveying your initial message, but with practice you will be optimizing in no time. (If you know for sure what the article blog post will be about ahead of time, you can do the keyword research first and try to implement the phrases as you write.)
No matter how tempting it might be to overuse these SEO Google tips to achieve faster results, never ever compromise your writing quality to cram keywords into the copy. If a word or phrase looks like it might not work, let it go and focus on the ones that will. And above all else, be patient. Good optimization takes time to work properly. Stay the course, and you will start to see results.
Check out professional search marketing websites for some of the best SEO tips blogs available for more free SEO tips and tricks. And feel free to share your favorites in the comments below. Happy writing!