So you finally got your blog running and are super excited about turning it into a success. After enriching your blog with great and original content you congratulate yourself on a job well done. A casual search on Google some months later and your blog doesn’t show up. This is cause for great concern.
Your decision to blog came about as a result of looking for a side income. In order for you sell anything on your blog, you need traffic. You can get everything else right but without traffic, you might as well be writing to yourself.
Traffic is the life-blood of every blog. Lots of traffic will translate into conversions. You can get traffic from social network sites or you can pay for them. What happens if you don’t have money to pay again or your friends stop supporting you. You traffic flow stops and this will eventually kill your blog. Organic traffic is the best of them well. Organic traffic lets your content speak for itself.
When you enter a word in a google search, you are presented with a list of websites. Apart from the advertised ones, the first one is what Google has ranked highest in that particular search hence it’s position. If your blog can rank that high then you can have lots of organic traffic and that is every blogger’s dream.
SEO(search engine optimization)is what you need to rank on google. There are a lot of SEO practices that can help your blog. If the whole concept is overwhelming there are people you can employ that can help. Just advertise on Fiverr or Upwork.
Any highly ranked page has got good SEO practices hence their ranking. In order for your blog to rank well, it needs to match the Googles algorithm. Google uses its algorithm to determine which pages to list in order of rankings.
Google algorithm doesn’t stay the same and it’s not even common knowledge. This is to prevent people from abusing it. Google being the most popular search engine wants to give people the best hence tightly guarding the methods they use to rank. Imagine searching for a particular Keyword and being shown an entirely different thing simply because somebody knows how to manipulate it. You obviously won’t be happy with that particular search engine.
SEO practices however does it’s best to match Google’s algorithm. There are practices that ensure that your blog or page will be well optimized for search engines.
The most important thing you don’t want to play with is your web host. Your web host matters a lot. A website that that is down every week will not rank. It won’t hurt to invest a bit more in the best web host.
The loading speed of your website or blog can also after your rankings. A lot of factors can affect your loading speed. Shared hosting is economical but if you want something faster and you expect to get a lot of traffic then deep deeper into your pocket for a better hosting plan.
Gone are the days that you need to get behind a Pc to browse. These days, Phones and Tablets are being used to do that a lot. Is your blog well optimized for these devices? If not, it will be hurting your SEO. Let me explain. This will mean only people with access to Pcs can access your site simply because you didn’t take the time to optimize it for mobile users. This is a good SEO practice that you can’t ignore. There is a good plug-in for this called AMP
Seo practices that really help you to rank are backlinks. Not every backlink is helpful though. Buying backlinks can hurt you and I won’t advise it. Backlinks to relevant sites, sites that have domain authority is what you need. Google sees relevant sites pointing to your site as a form of endorsement and would push your blog higher.
Internally linking to your own articles is also great.This helps you to retain traffic because it will keep them coming back for more.
One SEO practice that most people are aware of is Keywords.You can research the Keyword that most people are searching for and centre your articles around that.If you stuff your articles with too many Keywords it would actually hurt your SEO because Google would penalize you for that.
Embedding images in your articles helps to explain a lot. One thing you must not ignore is “alt text”.This SEO practice will help your images to come up in google searches easily. Don’t forget you need your blog discovered for every search. For WordPress users, when you upload an image there is a box labelled “alt text”.Make sure you give it the same label as your focus Keyword. This way if someone searches for that particular Keyword your image shows up as well.
Good SEO practice has a lot to do with content. You want a lot of traffic that means your articles need to be in demand. You must have answers to what people are searching for. When your content is able to meet people’s needs they are likely to share it and you know what going viral means. You can choose to write about obscure topics but a quick research on Quora can tell you what most people are currently searching for. When you give them the answers they seek then your blog will be well optimized for search engines.
Having a content that is in demand is good SEO practice but how would people know that through searches? Your title and meta description must be powerful enough to make them curious. Remember a lot of pages come up after a search. You need to have the type to title and meta description that would compel a user to click on your site even if you are not rated first. The meta description is a brief summary of what you read after the title in searches.
There a lot of SEO practices that would help you rank. You don’t need to practice all. Only a handful can get you the desired result. Another SEO practice that is still being touted is the length of your articles.SERPs(search engine report pages) most often list contents that are very long. Some think the length of your article is not relevant now but I believe it is. A well detailed and researched article would do well in searches.
Forums can also help your SEO. Not all Forums allow people to list their blog but some do. Search for forums related to your niche and give relevant answers. If it is allowed you can sign off with your website.
Quora is great for this type of SEO practice. There are regulations there so don’t go and overdo it. The number of people searching for answers on Quora will be a great source of traffic for you if done right. Some Keyword searches on Google will also bring up your answers on SERPs if Google thinks they are great.
After reading all of these if you think it’s too much for you as a beginner, just install Yoast all in one SEO plug-in. You can opt for the paid or free one. This plug-in is great for most of the SEO practices you need because it will prompt you for things you need to do to improve on your articles. If you are able to satisfy those requirements it gives you a score so you will be able to know how you are faring.
I cannot overemphasize the importance of organic traffic which you can only get through search engines. If you intend to be blogging for a long time you will do well to go for a course in SEO or employ a professional to take care of that side of the business for you.

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