You have been told time and time again that blogging can help drive traffic to your website, but the problem is, no one ever seems to tell you how to drive traffic to your blog post. And if your blog post isn't receiving views, how is it supposed to help your website?
Well, there are numerous things you can do to drive traffic to your blog including promoting it via social media or an email campaign, but today we are going to focus on getting your blog posts organic traffic.
So how is it done?
Step 1: Get Keyword Focused
The first thing you need to do when optimizing your blog post for search engines is decide what keywords you will be focusing on. You should ask yourself what your content is about, what problem it solves for your buyer personas, and what language your buyers might be using when searching the web.
Let's say you are the marketing director for a college, and you are trying to promote your digital art program. You might write a blog post about "things every digital art program should have". You know that your main term is "digital art," But what should your long-tailed keyword phrase be?
Well, what language are your buyers using? Would they be searching "college for digital art, "digital art program," or "major in digital art?" In order to fully optimize your post, you'll have to analyze and assess your buyers' diction, instead of using the language you are used to.
Step 2: Include Your Keyword in....
Once you have decided what keyword to focus on, you can start writing. You should include your keyword throughout your post itself, but also in the following areas:
- The title
- The subheadings
- The URL
- The metadescription (doesn't actually effect SEO, but still a good thing to do)
- The image alt. text
Step 3: Link In and Out
Along with tackling keywords, you need to make sure you are linking to relevant, reliable sources throughout your post. When you send a link out, you have the potential to make your content more valuable, as well as giving others more incentive to link back to you. Along with this, search engines algorithimically reward quality links out as well as links in, boosting your SEO ranking.
How many links? I normally try to link about 3 times for every 500 words, including 1 internal link. But again, there is no definitive answer, just make sure that your links are not taking away from your content.
Now that you know the basics of Search Engine Optimization for blog writing, you can start driving traffic to your blog posts (and more importantly your website) today! If you need more help with optimizing your blog or website, check out our course! We will take you through the whole content creation process, from creating buyer personas, to social media promotion!
