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If a blog post is published and no one reads it, does it exist?
Working on a blog (business or personal) is always a big investment of time and creativity. You spend an hour or four writing, press the publish button, and then… you wait.
You ultimately get 37 hits and you begin to wonder if it was worth spending all this time to reach so few people?
With the assumption that you’re putting out some good, interesting content, one way to maximize your visibility is to apply some basic SEO rules to your blog.
To put it simply, these rules will help you optimize your blog post so that search engines have no problem finding it, categorizing it, and displaying it in their results. In turn, this will increase the discoverability of your masterpiece and potentially lead more unique visitors on your blog.
Here are five basic practices for blog SEO that will increase the visibility of your blog post:
1. KEYWORDS: Pick a popular keyword or a phrase and write about it in your post. Ask yourself "What would my audience type into Google to find my blog post?" The keyword doesn’t have to be just one word, it can be two or three keywords strung together, like “basketball statistics”.
* Tip: As a general rule, try to keep the keyword or phrase three words or under.
2. BLOG CONTENT: When you've determined your keyword(s), pepper them into your blog post. If you're writing a piece on “basketball statistics”, and you don't mention "basketball statistics" in your blog post, then Google is going to have a hard time displaying your blog post for "basketball statistics"-related searches. Right? Right. Stick with a keyword density of 5-7% (e.g. If you have 100 words, mention your keyword 5-7x).
* Tip: If your keyword is 2 or more words, they don’t have to always appear in order (but it helps).
3. TITLE/URL: OK, this is technically two different types of blog optimization, but it's cool; the title and URL are closely-related. When you include your keyword in the title, it will also appear in the URL (e.g. "Why CRM is like basketball statistics" www.yoursite.com/why-crm-is-like-basketball-statistics) What you place as your post title will appear as the “Title Tag” – it’s the webpage title at the top of your browser and is THE most important SEO signal that you have direct control of.
* Tip: Google will cut off your title if it’s too long, keep the post title less than 79 characters (including spaces).
4. SHARE: Social signals are becoming a much larger piece of the Google puzzle and it's crucial to getting your blog post in front of as many people as possible. The wider the net, the likelier you'll catch someone interested in what you have to say. Share it out on your Facebook wall, your Twitter, your Google+, and LinkedIn.
* Tip: If you’re hardcore into pageviews and have no shame, you’re not limited to “sharing” the blog post on just your Facebook wall. Ask your friends to share. Find related Facebook groups or pages (“join” or” like”) and share it on their wall, too. Now, you’re a social media animal.
5. LINKS FROM EXTERNAL WEBSITES: Have a friend with a personal website? Does your grandma own a tumblr? Ask them to include a link to your blog post. And when gammy links to your blog post, make sure she uses the keywords you selected in step #1. E.g. “check out my granddaughter’s basketball statistics blog post. LOL” External links are the holy grails of overall SEO, not just blog SEO, and is the reason why Google’s algorithm is years ahead of any other search engine. Don’t be discouraged if you can’t find websites to link to you – it’s not easy.
* Tip: External links are important, but so are internal links. The next time you write up a blog post, link out to your old blog post using the targeted keyword(s) from step #1.
When it comes down to it, there are dozens of ways to optimize for blog SEO. If you follow these best practices, we can't promise you a ton of traffic, but you've covered the major steps in maximizing your blog's search engine visibility.
Can't get enough of SEO? Stay tuned for more blog SEO tips.
