How To Get Dynamic Traffic To Your Blog Pt. 1

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Ron Whitaker

This entry is part 1 of 3 in the series How To Get Dynamic Traffic To Your Blog

Enjoy this powerful series by Guest Blogger Ron Whitaker

Image courtesy of winnond/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

OK, folks, history lesson time!

Back in the 1800s American humorist Josh Billings made the following famous quote (actually, a little rhyme!): “I hate to be a kicker, I always long for peace, but the wheel that does the squeaking is the one that gets the grease.“

Just FYI, in the 1800s, the word “kicker” meant someone who was a constant complainer.

Now, I’m not saying that all of you are complainers, but if you’re a blogger who is frustrated with a lack of traffic to your blog, you just might be a kicker! (Wow! That was so Jeff Foxworthy!)

OK, so let’s learn how to be the squeaky wheel when it comes to our blogs and getting better traffic.

In this blog post, I’m going to show you the basics of how to improve your ability to get found in the search engines using keywords and phrases.

In Part 2, we’ll discuss “where” to include those keywords.

Then in Part 3 we’ll learn some strategies [guest posting, guest commenting, link building] to get your blog in front of larger audiences.

How I Learned About All This Blogging Stuff

Back in early 2009, when I was a caregiver for my mother, I decided that at some point I wanted to start and run my own website. Now, I had a lot of web design experience, having been a web designer since 1996.

I didn’t know what type of website I was going to launch, or what my service or product would be, but I knew I wanted to start my own website at some point down the road.

Fortunately, I had a good friend, Darrell, who had a lot of experience starting and running websites.

One day, as I was speaking to him about my desire to start my own website, he told me that I would need to do SEO.

What’s SEO, I asked?

Searching Engine Optimization.

What’s that?

He explained that it included certain steps you take so that when someone was searching for a particular keyword or keyphrase, your website would rank highly in search engines, such as Google.

I suddenly realized that I had a lot of studying and learning to do before I even thought of moving forward with my venture!

So, I began studying.

And studying.

And studying…

…my brains out!

As I began studying the topic of SEO, I learned that you need to do something called “keyword research” and then implement those keywords into your content.

That’s the start of how to get traffic to your blog!

But there’s more!

What are keywords and how do I implement them in my blog posts?

Good question!

If you and I were having a conversation, and I was telling you about my trip to Flagstaff (Arizona), I would mention things like Flagstaff, Arizona, Northern Arizona, Northern Arizona University, the Arboretum at Flagstaff, the Museum of Northern Arizona, etc.

You wouldn’t hear me mention terms like Paris, Eiffel Tower, Wall of Berlin, Germany or the Louvre.

Those terms simply have nothing to do with Flagstaff!

So it is with our blog posts.

We need to focus on one (maybe two) ideas in each post.

And those ideas are communicated through words.

And we focus those ideas through what are known as keywords.

That way readers, as well as search engines like Google, know what the blog post’s focus is.

Starting a keyword research campaign

So, how do you get started?

Well, before writing a blog post, or even before launching your website, determine what the focus of the website or blog post will be.

Think about what words or phrases someone would use in a search engine that would lead someone to your site or blog post.

For example, when I started my website, a venue for baby boomers to list and sell “stuff” as they downsize, I considered words and phrases that people would enter into a search engine.

Image courtesy of stockimages / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Phrases like “baby boomers,” “buy and sell,” and “selling stuff” came to mind.

Just as a tip, come up with longer worded phrases, as opposed to single word keywords.

Why?

As another example, if I have a website that sells t-shirts, trying to get the search engines to rank highly for the word “t-shirt” is going to be difficult.

First, it’s too broad of a term.

Second, it’ll be way too competitive.

Instead, consider a phrase like “red polo t-shirts.”

It’ll be less competitive and probably will be easier to rank in the search engines.

How do I know if anyone’s even searching on that phrase?

That’s where some online tools come in handy.

Once you’ve made a list of all the keyword phrases you can think of, take them to an online keyword research tool.

What’s that?

Keyword research tools show you how many people are searching for that word or phrase in search engines, as well as how competitive that keyword is. By competitive, I mean how many other websites are already using and ranking for that particular keyword.

Google offers a great keyword research tool. And best of all, it’s free!

You can find the Google keyword research tool by clicking this link.

Once you arrive at the keyword research tool page, simply enter your keyword into the “Word or phrase” box.

After you click the Search button, a list appears below, showing keyphrases based on your “seed” keyword.

The Competition column shows how competitive that keyword will be to rank for.

The Global Monthly Searches column shows the amount of searches performed worldwide on that keyword or keyphrase.

The Local Monthly Searches column shows the amount of searches performed locally on that keyword or keyphrase. Locally is based on the country you chose in the Advanced Options and Filters section above. The default is United States.

Google’s keyword research tool is a great free tool. There are also keyword research tools that come with a fee.

One of the best ones out there, and the one I use, is called Market Samurai. It’s an excellent tool, relatively inexpensive, that will definitely help you get laser focused with your keyword research.

The owners of Market Samurai also provide excellent training videos as well to help you get started with using their product.

Summary

If you’ve ever wondered how to get traffic to your blog, the foundation lies in the keywords you use.

In this post we learned that keywords are essential to showing viewers the focus of our websites and blog posts.

We learned that to focus a blog post on a particular topic, we need to discover which keywords will be the best, yet not too competitive, to include in a post.

We also learned that there are some excellent tools out there, such as Google’s Keyword Research tool, and Market Samurai, that can make the process of discovering quality keywords easier.

So, where do we go once we’ve discovered a keyword or phrase that we want to use in a blog post?

That’s next week’s topic.

Stay tuned!

How To Get Dynamic Traffic to Your Blog Where to Put Keywords in Your Blog Posts-Part 2

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Ron Whitaker

This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series How To Get Dynamic Traffic To Your Blog

Greetings, boomer bloggers. This is Ron Whitaker, Guest Blogger, with part 2 of your series on keywords.

If you remember, last week I discussed the basics of keyword research.

Here’s a quick review:

If you remember my example from last week, I said that if you and I were having a discussion about my trip to Flagstaff, Arizona, throughout our discussion, you’d definitely hear me mention words like Flagstaff, Arizona, Northern Arizona, and Northern Arizona University.

I wouldn’t mention or discuss Paris, Eiffel Tower, or the Berlin Wall. Those words simply have nothing to do with Flagstaff!

Easy enough, yeah?

OK. So if you’re writing a brilliant blog post, where do you actually put the keywords or key phrases so that the search engines can find them and determine what your blog post is about so that it can be ranked well for that keyword or key phrase?

Well, that’s the point of today’s lesson. Let’s get started!

You asked for it…you got it!

Here’s where you’re going to need to place your keywords for best SEO practices.

Drum roll, please!

1. Page Title
2. Body text headers
3. Within links
4. Within the content
5. ALT Tags
6. Meta Description tag
7. File names
8. Domain name

Ta-da! There you have it.

Now, let’s discuss each one.

Page Title

What’s the page title?

If you’re familiar with HTML, the scripting language used to design web pages, the title of a website is found between the <title></title> tags.

And where is the title of the web page found?

Right here:

Take a moment and look at the very top of your browser. In Firefox, my browser of choice, it’ll be at the very top within the blue bar.

THAT’s the title. And it’s a critical place to include your keywords!

Now, do you need to know HTML and modifying the tag for each blog post?

The good news is no! Thankfully.

If you have a self-hosted WordPress blog, there’s a little trick you can use to get your keywords into your title.

Here’s how:

Under the Settings menu item along the left side of your screen, select Permalinks.

On the Permalinks Settings page, within the Common Settings section, select Post name.

When you choose this option, the next time you create a blog post, the title you enter in the Edit Post screen will become the title of your blog post within browsers.

Very clever…and helpful! (Thank you, WordPress!)

Body Text Headers

As you’re creating your content, it’s always a good idea to break it up.

How?

With headers.

For example, the headers so far in this blog post are “Where to place keywords revealed,” “Page Title,” and this section, “Body Text Headers.”

Not only is it a nice way of breaking up the text, especially if you’re publishing a long blog post, but it’s also a great place to include your keywords!

How do you include a header?

Here’s where some research into “H” tags will come in handy.

Within links

Here’s another great place to put some keywords: within links!

As you write your blog post, there may be times when you need to link either to another blog post on your own site, or to another site completely.

When including links in your post, go ahead and put a keyword in the link that relates to the post you’re writing, as well as the page you’re linking to.

Within the content

This one’s a no-brainer!

The most obvious place you want to include your keywords is within the content of the blog post itself!

Tip: When planning and writing your blog post, you don’t need to write the keyword in the exact same manner every time.

As an example, as I planned and wrote a post on relieving caregiver stress through journaling, the key phrase I determined I would use was “relieving caregiver stress.”

Along with that, I used a variation: “relieve caregiver stress.” I also used the phrase “caregiver stress” which also provides a good clue to search engines as to the intent and focus of this post.

The takeaway here is that once you’ve determined your keyword or key phrase, come up with some slight variations as well. Don’t worry, search engines like Google are smart enough to figure out what your post is about.

What do you do if you want to post a video?

That’s fun!

First, determine what topic you’re going to cover in your video. And yes, that’ll include determining a keyword you want to focus on.

Second, shoot your video.

Third, once you’ve finished your video and are ready to publish it, go through the video (or have someone else do it) and transcribe it.

Then put the video transcript beneath the video when you publish.

As an example, I wanted to let my potential customers know the focus and purpose of my website. I also determined that I wanted to present it in a fun video.

I decided that the keywords I wanted to concentrate on were what boomers can do with all the “stuff” they’ve ended up with.

So, I created the video, uploaded it to WordPress, then transcribed the video with the content used, which of course included the keywords.

Remember, Google can’t “grab” onto the content within a video. But, it can grab and index the text on a blog post.

Hence, the video transcription below the actual video is a great way to do this!

ALT Tags

What are ALT tags?

In a nutshell, ALT tags are found within <img> tags. The <img> tag is the tag you use to place an image within a blog post or on a static web page.

Mouse over any of the images I’ve used so far in this blog post. Let it sit there a second and you’ll notice text pop up near the mouse pointer.

This is a result of the ALT tag used in the <img> tag.

The good news is, you don’t necessarily need to know how to insert an <img> tag within your blog post.

Here’s what you can do:

The simplest way to insert an image into your blog post is to first place your cursor where you want the image to appear, then click the Add Media button located right above the text box where you write your blog post.

If you haven’t already, upload your image(s).

Select the one you want to insert into your post.

Notice at the right something similar to the following:

At the top is a thumbnail of the image. But it’s the section below that we’re interested in.

Two entries specifically—Title and Alt Text—are our new BFFs!

Simply enter a phrase—with your keywords, if it works—into each of these text boxes and WordPress will do the rest for you!

Meta Description Tag

Have you ever read those little descriptions below the title of a Google search result? Perhaps an image would better illustrate (pun intended!). Check out the chunks of text in red below.

Those chunks of text come from the Meta Description tag.

If you manually entered it into your blog post, it would look something like this:

Don’t worry, there’s a MUCH easier way to enter the text you want to be included in the meta description of your post. Please see The Best SEO Plugin Ever section at the end of this post.

For now, just know that putting your keywords in this section is a boon for you and those searching on your keywords.

File Names

What file name makes more sense as far as search engine optimization goes?

1) http://www.domainname.com/blog/?p=3234

2) http://www.domainname.com/blog/10-steps-to-easy-keyword-research/

Without question, option #2!

Why?

Simply put, it’s got your keyword in it?

So, how do you get your keywords into the name of the file?

Again, thanks to WordPress, it’s a snap!

Remember this image from the Page Title section above?

Notice the second arrow pointing to the Permalink line. The cool thing is that whatever you enter in your title not only will be entered as the title of your post, and therefore appear at the top of your browser, but it will also become the filename of the blog post itself.

So, if I’m writing a blog post titled “How to write a blog post” based on the image above, the file and URL of the blog post will look something like this:

http://www.domainname.com/blog/how-to-write-a-blog-post

How nifty is that?

Don’t forget, you’ll need to go into the Permalinks section of your WordPress admin and set Common Settings to Post name. See the Page Title section above.

Domain Name

Not sure what a domain name is?

The following are domain names:

www.microsoft.com
www.marthastewart.com
www.oprah.com
www.usa.gov

Sometimes it can be challenging to get your keywords into your domain name. As an example, look at eBay.

Granted, eBay is now a brand, but before it came onto the scene, I doubt many people were searching for the word eBay.

If possible though, your domain name can be a fantastic place to include a keyword.

The Best SEO Plugin Ever

OK. If keeping track of all the above seems a bit overwhelming, well, it is!

But, there’s some smart guys over at Yoast who’ve created this amazing plugin for WordPress. It’s called WordPress SEO, and I HIGHLY recommend you install it in your WordPress admin and use it!

It makes all this keyword stuff so much easier!

Once installed, the Yoast plugin will appear below the text box where you enter and write your blog posts.

Here’s what it looks like:

You’ll notice four tabs at the top of the WordPress SEO by Yoast section: General, Page Analysis, Advanced, and Social.

For this blog post, I’m just going to concentrate on the General tab.

When I first enter the Add New screen to write a blog post, the first thing I do is scroll down to the Yoast plugin section and enter my keyword into the text box next to Focus Keyword. Notice here a sample from my own blog. The keyword I was focusing on was “sandwich generation.”

From there, it’s pretty much downhill!

The Snippet Preview shows what your search result will look like in Google.

One of my favorite features appears below the Focus Keyword text box. Once you enter your keyword, Yoast will show you how many times your keyword was found within the Article Heading, Page Title, Page URL, Content, and Meta Description.

How awesome is that!

You now know exactly where the keyword has been placed and how many times it was found.

Remember above in the Meta Description section I referred you to this section? Here’s why:
Notice at the bottom of the Yoast plugin the Meta Description entry? All you have to do here is enter your description—using your keyword?and bam! It’s all done for you. Yoast will enter it automatically into your blog post.

Well, that is it for this week’s blog post and where to place your keywords for best search engine results.

Next week we’ll discuss how to be popular!

How to Get Dynamic Traffic to Your Blog-Part 3

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Ron Whitaker

This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series How To Get Dynamic Traffic To Your Blog

This is the 3rd post in a series by Guest Blogger Ron Whitaker

Well, friends, we’ve reached the end…the end of my little series, that is.

In Part 1, I discussed the importance of keyword research before writing and publishing a blog post.

In Part 2, I provided some best practices on where to include those keywords in your blog posts.

Now, in Part 3, I’ll provide some tips that I’ve learned over the past few months about how to drive traffic to your website once you’ve completed the above steps.

But first, a question?

Were you popular in high school?

Were you the popular cheerleader or jock who everyone wanted to hang out with? You know, the one who got invited to every party and activity?

If you were, I envy you!

Granted, I had friends, but definitely didn’t fall within the cool crowd.

But that was then…and we’re in a new age: the Internet age! And the good news is, the game’s changed!

Whoo-hoo!

So today, I’m going to show everyone who reads this post how they can be cool and popular online.

Is it easy?

No. It WILL take work, but it’s doable! And the rewards can be fantastic!

What does being popular have to do with driving traffic to my blog?

Good question.

Let’s delve into that topic with another question:

Thinking back to those popular kids in high school, how did you know they were popular?

Maybe they were nice?

Maybe they dressed in the coolest, hippest fashion of the time?

Maybe they knew all the words to the latest popular songs?

What exactly did they do or say that clued you in that they were popular?

Perhaps the famous quote by John Kuebler will provide a hint: Show me your friends and I will show you your future.

The playwright Euripides also provides a clue: Every man is like the company he is wont to keep.

Thinking back to the question above—how did you know they were popular?—the obvious answer to tell that those kids were popular was by the quantity of friends they surrounded themselves with.

So, there it is in a nutshell. They had friends. And lots of them!

But what does that have to do with driving traffic to your website?

How to be popular on the Internet

Well, if you want to get traffic to your website, you’ve got to be popular on the web!

How?

Just like in high school, you knew the popular kids were popular by the number of friends they had, the same principle applies to the Internet!

Image courtesy of suphakit73 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Here’s the secret: search engines like Google recognize how “popular” your website is by the number of links from other websites that point to your website.

Show me a website that ranks high for a particular keyword in Google, and I can pretty much guarantee that that site has a fairly high number of links, also known as backlinks, pointing back to it from other websites from around the virtual world.

Great! I wanna be popular on the web and get links pointing back to my website. How do I do it?

There are many ways.

I’m going to focus on two in this post:

Guest blog posting
Blog commenting

Guest Blog Posting

So, what’s guest blog posting?

Well, it’s what I’m doing here! I don’t own Blogging for Boomers, Rosie does!

Though my website lies elsewhere in the virtual world, Rosie was kind enough to invite me to come on over here and do a series of guest posts.

What does guest blog posting do?

Several things.

Guest posting allows you to build relationships around the web. (Hint: make friends! The more you have, the more popular you become!)

Also, when you guest post on another blog, it allows you to create a link or two back to your own website.

How do you find blogs for guest posting?

As an example, say you have a budding blog centered around the topic of vintage auto restoration.

Head over to Google and perform a search like the following:

Auto restoration “write for us.”

What does this search operator do?

Image courtesy of stockimages / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It returns websites centered around auto restoration and that allow guest bloggers to post on their blogs (hence “write for us”).

Here are some other searches you can use to find blogs that allow guest bloggers on their sites. We’re still using our example of auto restoration as your business. You can replace “auto restoration” with keywords that are related to your own blog.

Auto restoration “guest post”
Auto restoration “guest blogger”
Auto restoration “submit an article”
Auto restoration “submit a blog post”

Those ought to get you started!

And here’s a hint, when you provide a blog post for another site, make sure it’s your best stuff! Show the world what you know about your topic! Sock it to ‘em!

You’ll make new friends along the way (becoming popular!), you’ll build credibility with a new audience, and you’ll get a sweet link (or two) back to your own blog.

Blog Commenting

What’s blog commenting?

Actually, I feel another story coming on!

Once upon a time there was a new website owner/blogger who wanted to start making friends around the webosphere.

He started commenting on blogs that were related to his own website, and who had audiences he was trying to reach as well.

One day he left a comment on a blog about blogging for boomers. Someone named Rosie noticed, replied to his comment, and invited him to post a blog series on her website.

The end.

And it all started with commenting on a blog!

Commenting on blogs simply means finding those blogs that are centered around topics similar to yours and then visiting them and posting comments at the end of posts.

It’s that simple, but I have a STRONG word of caution.

The first rule of commenting is when guest commenting make sure you enter “quality” comments.

Do NOT, under any circumstance, simply write “Nice post. Thanks.”

Just don’t go there!

When commenting, make sure your comments are heartfelt and really provide VALUE to the comments section. Provide a comment that offers a new point of view, or affirms through your experiences how you relate to the points that were made by the author.

In other words, provide quality comments.

You never know what might happen. You just may receive an invitation to guest post on that blog.

I did!

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