How to Generate Traffic on your Blogs

 SEO means Search Engine Optimization; which focuses mainly on creating traffic on a website.
SEO is at the top of every bloggers mind and it’s a word that gets tossed around a lot, but not many people actually know what to do with SEO when it comes to making their sites rank higher. WordPress helps us out with a lot of the major problems that non-Wordpress users might have, when it comes to SEO.
The Yoast SEO Plugin (we have a full video series on this plugin within Blogging.org members area) covers most of the basics and allows you to create focus keywords, an SEO title and meta description for each blog post you go live with, and it also allows you to see exactly what your search listing will look like when it’s indexed and found by a search users.

Simple SEO Tips for Bloggers

This tool in itself is one of your best resources when it comes to creating a powerful SEO foundation for your site… however, there are still many others that you can improve upon as well! Here are a few of them.

#1 – Write Headings & Content for People, Not the Search Engines

Gone are the days when you can rank at the top of the search results by stuffing keywords throughout your content and use the exact match domain name, website name and post names. Instead you need to write content and headlines that cater to your audience, while also reading well and including your target keywords as well.
Finding the middle ground between just putting you target keyword as the title and coming up with something too complex is the most complicating part.
I’ve italicized the keyword that you might be trying to rank for, while also adding in a twist or area of focus. The next time you are writing a title for your blog, be sure to read it out loud and ask yourself if it sounds right, draws interest and also includes your target keyword.

#2 – Link Building is Still Very Important

Even with Google slapping sites in and out of the search results for their “unnatural” link building efforts, the success of many of the top ranking sites in the search results does ultimately come down to the link they have going back to their site. So with all of this confusion going on with link building, how can you know which are right?
Here are a few methods that are still working well for sites and blogs of all sizes.

• Guest Blogging – Yes, guest blogging does still work well, when done right . If you are going to focus your efforts on guest blogging, make sure you are writing quality 1,000+ word articles that provide real value. The goal here is to not online create great content, but also get accepted by only the best sites out there. Also focus your efforts on blogs that are within your own niche — guest blogging on relevant blogs in your niche is key.
• Internal Link Building – Your blog probably already has a bunch of content and going live with new articles daily. Within each of these posts you should be building internal links that send users to other pages within your site as well. This also helps Google crawl through your site and see anchor text as well.
• Infographics – Another great way to build links back to your site is through the use of infographics. When creating and distributing infographic for your site, make sure the content is high quality and original. To get more promotion and high quality links back to  your site, try contacting other authority blogs in your space to see if they would like to share the infographic with their audience. One of the site is an infographic created on the top free web hosting companies. Try something similar in your niche!
  
   

#3 – Focus on Your Keywords Before Writing Content

This one seems obvious enough, but for many bloggers and site owners it’s a good reminder of the importance of “keyword focus”. Before writing your next article, it’s important for you to do some research on that keyword first. Here are some things you should be looking for.

• How many people are searching for this keyword per month?
• What quality of sites are ranking on the first page for this keyword?
• Can I create a quality 1000+ article focused around this keyword?

It’s not just the main keyword that you are trying to rank for that will be important, as the article will likely rank for multiple long tail keywords as well. Spend an extra 10-15 mins before writing your blog post to look at your desired keywords and seeing what the search competition and landscape for this keyword already looks like.

#4 – Faster Site Speed Equals Higher Rankings

In addition to all of the new algorithms and penalties that Google has in place for site rankings, they also consider site speed to be another major factor in the ranking process? It’s true, and it could be affecting your site right now!

Even if you have the best site content and the best focus on your keywords and titles, a slow loading page for your site could be keeping you from achieving higher rankings.
A great way to increase the loading times of your site is to make sure that offers minimal downtime. You should also make sure that you are using a high quality and trusted WordPress theme and not clogging up your site with a lot of unused WordPress plugins.
Lastly, if you have any decent traffic flowing through your site or a graphics heavy site, you should also consider using a CDN (content delivery network). We currently use MaxCDN to host all of the images on this blog, which allows for them to load faster, as they are hosted separately on servers throughout the word and are also cached to offer optimum speed and performance issues.

SEO Tips to Help Your Blog Rank Higher

As you can see, we’ve only scratched the surface for SEO (on-site and off-site), while also mentioning a bit about link building as well.
First and foremost… don’t build spammy links to your site. This will only kill your chances of staying clean with Google and if you get a penalty, this could result in thousands of dollars in lost traffic and damage control after words.
In addition to staying clean with your link building, make sure that your content quality is also very high. Yes, Google is penalizing sites for low quality content as well. Blogs used to look for 500+ word articles, now they are focusing on 1000-1500+ minimums — you should do the same.
Follow these tips and take the time to perform the necessary keyword research to create amazing content for your audience and there is no doubt you will see your sites rank higher in the search results in no time! 
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