SEO is overwhelming, right? Most people don’t understand the importance of having an SEO strategy to grow their website’s traffic or sales.
If you’re also one among them, you need an effective SEO strategy to build a high traffic website because search engine traffic is the most valuable source of traffic which can boost your sales and conversions.
Here are 5 proven and most effective SEO strategies for bloggers who are looking to get better rankings from search engines like Google.
#1. Keyword research for SEO
Your website’s SEO success depends on your keyword research. Most bloggers struggle to increase their website’s organic traffic because they don’t do proper keyword research.
If you’re also one among them, start focusing on finding better keywords and your traffic will never be the same. That being said, here are few to keep in mind while doing keyword research for SEO.
Long tail keywords are golden.
Most beginner bloggers don’t realize the importance of long tail keywords. Whether you know it or not, long tail keywords contribute to 70% of search queries are long tail. Have a look at the below illustration.
So if you want to rank better and get more traffic from search engines to your sites, start focusing on finding long tail keywords.
You can use tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs etc to easily find a ton of profitable and low volume long tail keywords no matter what industry you are in. Just make sure to pick the keywords with less search volume (monthly searches under 1000) to get better search rankings on Google.
Find and use LSI keywords
Google loves LSI (Latent Semantic Index) keywords which are simply synonymous keywords to the primary keyword that you want to rank for.
LSI keywords help you easily optimize your content without stuffing the same keywords again and again. You can use tools like LSI Graph, KWFinder etc for finding LSI keywords in any niche.
You can also use “related searches” on Google to find LSI keywords easily.
Consider search intent
While doing keyword research, it’s essential for everyone to focus and consider “search intent”. Search intent has everything to do with the “searcher’s intention”.
Why are they searching? What’s the intent behind those searches?
Once you know your target audience pulse and search intent, you can easily pick better performing keywords which not only bring you more traffic but also sales and conversions to your website.
#2. Rethink your content marketing strategy
Gone are the days where you can get first page results by creating 500 word articles. Google is getting smarter and better each day and rewarding the sites with long form of content.
In fact the average content length of top 10 search results is around 2000 words.
Brian Dean also concluded the same that, the average length of your content directly impacts your search engine rankings.
So if you’re still creating those 500 to 1000 word articles and expecting great results from Google, you’re going to be disappointed. Read here for my detailed analysis on how long your blog posts should be.
I’m not saying that you should create 2000+ long form of articles every single time but make sure to create detailed articles especially if you want to rank for popular and competitive keywords.
That being said, here are few quick tips for you to create long form of content easily.
- Research is the key. The more time you spend on researching the topics, genres, references for your articles, the easier you can create massive blog posts. Always make sure to go through all the top 10 results on Google search for the keywords or topics that you want rank for.
- Outlining is everything. When it comes to creating long form of useful content, make sure to outline cleverly. You can use Google Docs to easily break down your content into separate sections with subheadings so you’ll find it much easier to create longer blog posts.
- Get into the habit of writing daily. The more you write, the easier it becomes for you to churn out massive articles. It’s as simple as that.
- Create a solid social media strategy: Social media should be an important part of your off-page SEO strategy and you should make sure you have a strong social media plan to build your brand’s following and active community.
#3. Competitor research is the key
One of the easiest ways to win at SEO is to analyse your competitor websites. Firstly, make a list of all the important competitor websites so you can start analyzing them for better results in terms of traffic and sales.
Competitor analysis allows you to find out everything from keyword research to backlink analysis to content marketing strategies your competitors are using to get better results.
So if you’ve decided to perform a thorough research of your competitors, make sure to analyse the following things.
- Find out their top performing keywords: When you are doing competitor analysis, you should start with the keyword research. Find out what keywords are generating more traffic to your competitors websites so you can also repeat the same with your blog by covering similar topics or keyword ideas.
- Find out your competitors backlink sources: If you want to quickly boost your search rankings, you need to attract as many quality backlinks as possible because Google gives top priority to the pages with more links. The best way to attract more links is to analyse your competitors backlink sources so you can use tactics like blogger outreach, broken link building etc to get links to your own sites.
- Analyse their content marketing strategy: How often your competitors are publishing new contents on their sites? How long their content is? How many comments, shares or tweets they are getting? Once you’ve answers to these questions, you can easily develop or tweak your own content marketing strategy which drives you better results.
- Look for content gaps: The biggest benefit of doing competitor research is that it gives you content ideas as well as content gaps which you can use to strategically improve your website’s content.
For all the above things, you can use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush etc so consider investing your money on these premium SEO tools if you want to get better results.
#4. Don’t forget the importance of on page optimization
On page optimization is a must and it refers to all the things that you can do to your website in order to rank better and higher in Google search for various keywords that you want to rank for.
On page SEO comes only after keyword research. So make sure to find out your primary and secondary keywords in order to properly optimize your content for various keywords.
That being said, you don’t have to stuff your keywords left and right on your web pages (which is called keyword stuff and you should avoid it at all costs) for getting better rankings.
Here are few places where you can insert your primary keywords for better on page optimization.
- Heading
- Page title
- URL
- Meta description
- Image optimization
Apart from the above places, you can also insert your primary keyword here and there within your article (mostly at the beginning and end of the content) to better optimize for search engines like Google. Just make sure NOT to insert your primary keywords deliberately and let them flow naturally within your content.
Quick tip: If you’re using WordPress, make sure to install WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin which is free to use and helps you easily optimize your content for particular keywords.
#5. Website audits are essential
Last but not least: you need to find the reasons why your website is not getting the results it deserves. That means, you need to find and fix all the website technical related issues to start getting better search rankings.
Here are few vital reasons why every website needs an audit.
- You can check your website’s health and find out all the issues it has (to rectify and get better results)
- You can find out if your website has any penalties or negative attacks (so you can act quickly to fix your website penalties)
- You can compare where your website stands against the competition (and also gives you a ton of ideas to improve your rankings)
So how can you perform site audits regularly?
You can use tools like SEMrush if you want to carefully analyse your website’s performance in search engines and it also gives you overall website health score along with the list of all the issues that your site has.
You can also use free SEO audit tools like Seoptimer, The Hoth etc for easily find common issues that your website has.
In a nutshell, an SEO audit helps you easily find all the website issues including missing title tags, image alt tags, lengthy descriptions, broken links etc so you can get better rankings by fixing them.
Conclusion about the best SEO strategies for bloggers
Creating and developing an SEO strategy is a must for every blogger who wants to build a profitable website online. If you’re someone who’s looking to get ahead in your industry, you need to focus on getting better at SEO.
The key here is to test everything and stick to the best SEO strategy that works well for your website and audience. So what do you think? Do you have an SEO strategy? Share your thoughts in the comments.