SEO from a Blogger’s Perspective

We write a blog, we get it in front of our network, we send it out in  email campaign and even shared it in on LinkedIn. It got some readership and we move on to the next one. But think of all the blogs and articles that you come across when you are Googling for content, they may be months old, but you click through and often get value. Search engine optimization or (SEO) is what is need for sustainability, consistent readership and getting readers to your content that you didn’t even know you didn’t know.

We begin by making a list of keywords and phrases that we believe our prospects are using to find our products and/or services. Then we want to check to see if they really are the words and phrases they use in their searches. There are many sites that can help you to identify and determine some strategic words that you will want to include throughout your profile so you can be found, here are a few to check out:

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in
a search engine’s “natural” or un-paid (”Organic”) search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page) and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users. SEO may target different kinds of searches, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines. – Wikipedia

Here are a few valuable tools you can use to identify the keywords your prospective reader uses when looking for your content:

wordstream.com/keywords – there is a free version available but it gives you limited information. They claim to have a trillion-keyword database and you can try 30 keywords for free. There are checkboxes that allow you to filter and more options for finding negative keywords and grouping your keywords. The full paid version has tens of thousands of results for many keywords, the top 100 of which are available for free.

semrush.com is the king of keyword search – however only the first 10 are free, so use them wisely. SEMrush also shares 10 organic competitors for those keywords. Visit those competitors’ profiles and get the 10 organic keywords they are ranking for. You gain great insight into the words and phrases that you should be using.

adwords.google.com – Click on tools and analytics. Type in your keyword and you get to see how many times those terms were searched.

keywordeye.com – This is our favorite; it gives you word clouds and graphs and all kinds of fun tools to help you assess your keywords. They have a basic free and a pro version. No need to pay initially, the basic will give you 10 searches, so use them wisely. You will have to sign up and confirm your email, and then you are all set.

keywordspy.com – LOVE this! The magic here is in discovering your competitors and their keywords, daily database updates, looking into good adwords and sharing with you who is buying those keywords, and ultimately profiting from the success of your competitors. Sign up for the free trial.

Need some help with your SEO or Blogging, Schedule a free call with Sally Jo or Brynne!