6 SEO basics that will help increase your website or blog gain traffic

6 SEO basics that will help increase your website or blog gain traffic

We all start off online with hopes and dreams of gaining millions of visitors but quickly realize it takes much more than an idea in order for the traffic to show up.  A lot of bloggers still don't understand exactly how to do SEO for their posts, and this is one of the main things that will help you gain a massive amount of traffic for free.  Yes, you don't have to pay for search engine traffic because they rank you based on how much of an authority they think you are and how much their visitors will like your content.  Don't get me wrong, you can pay for top rankings on all of the search engines, but that has nothing to do with SEO.

I've started working with people who are just starting off with their first blog, and I quickly noticed a lot of them actually have no clue what they are doing lol.  That is why this discussion came into my head, I've been helping them and I want to help out many other new bloggers so they don't have to go back and edit anything for better rankings in order to get more traffic

If you've been blogging for a few months, you likely know what I'm about to go over, but this discussion should still be a good read so I would urge you to stick around and let others know a thing or two that you didn't know about blogging when you started

Now then, let's get started!


Your Keywords
Sure, a lot of bloggers likely start writing about things they like and don't really worry about their traffic in the beginning, which is a good thing to do, but if you aren't targeting the right keywords in the beginning you will likely have to go back and edit a few things.

No matter your niche or industry, you have keywords that will bring in a decent amount of traffic and others that won't bring in anything.  It doesn't matter what you like, it's what the majority of people are searching for that will determine how much traffic you can get to your website or blog.  The more people search for a keyword is difficult to figure out, but you can do it using tools like SEMrush and even Google Adwords Keyword Tool   You can get an estimate on how much traffic a keyword is getting, then target it with your content and blog posts

Another way to come up with some keywords to target is by looking at the suggested searches that Google, Yahoo!, and Bing will give you when you search something.  You know, the few links at the bottom that say something like "Related Searches" and has a few links?  Well, those terms have been searched a decent amount of times by people on that particular search engine, so you know you can pull some traffic from them if you end up ranking over time


Proper Alt Tags
Bloggers and website owners use images all the time, and I'm not talking about a simple background image, I'm talking about an image you place within the text to show your readers exactly what you're talking about.  If you're not using proper alt tags, the search engines will just see that there is an image there and they will move on.  If you use the right alt tag, and add in a keyword, you can let the search engines know exactly what the image is and they will be able to evaluate you and rank your page(s) accurately over time

Alt tags became more popular a little while ago because Google started putting more priority into images and how to rank them.  By helping out Google and the other search engines figure out what your images are, they will likely boost you in the rankings


Your Titles
Bloggers who are just starting off probably don't think about how their titles will alter their rankings, but they quickly figure it out when they decide to boost their traffic   Remember when we talked about keywords a little while ago?  Well, you'll need to get a keyword into your title in order to let the search engines know exactly what you're talking about.  Your title is one of the first things that the search engines will read on your website and it's usually what is indexed within their search results.

By having your keyword within the title, you're increasing your chances of boosting your rankings within the search engines and gaining plenty of free traffic that converts at a much higher rate than most other sources. 

You'll want to try and get your keyword near the beginning of your title so you can be sure it will be seen by the search engines right away and also show up when indexed.


Good Meta Descriptions
Just under your titles, you'll have a meta description, which is something that will also be indexed within the search engines.  If you go to Google and type in any search, you'll see many results showing a title, a URL, and then a short description.  You'll edit this snippet of content within your blogs CMS or in the code of the page itself.  If you're using WordPress, you can just use an SEO plugin and edit everything as your writing up your post

Meta descriptions can help you get ranked, just like your titles, so be sure to add one or two keywords into this in order to have the best benefit from your writing.


Your Content
A lot of people think "as long as I'm adding content I'll rank for my keywords" which is a naive way of thinking about it.  Sure, you'll likely have your keywords within the content, but this can backfire if you're not watching what you're doing.  You can easily saturate your article or post with keywords, making it something that will get you a penalty due to keyword stuffing.  If you get penalized for keyword stuffing, you'll have to edit everything in order to lift the penalty, and there's no set time of how long it takes to get this lifted.

Your keyword density within the content should be under 5%, but realistically you should target 2% or 3% because it makes your content more readable.  You'll also need to write for your readers, not the search engines, and this will take time to learn how to do all while optimizing your content at the same time.  Remember, Google and the other search engines want you to post content for your visitors, not for their spiders who are coming to see your content and index it.


Building Backlinks
Now a lot of us will know what this is, but again, the newer bloggers might not understand exactly what a backlink is.

Well, a backlink is just a 3rd party website that links back to you because they like what you wrote or they like how your blog or website works   The search engines don't like it when you build your own backlinks, but there's no real way to track this, so go for it lol.  Just be careful because this is the one thing with websites and blogs that can go wrong and really hurt your rankings.  If you don't know what you're doing, I would highly suggest talking with someone in order to outsource the work.  Just be sure you're paying the right person to do the work and you're not just hiring the cheapest person that you talk with lol.

If you don't want to outsource your backlink building, you will need to learn about high authority links.  Look for high DA (domain authority) links that are related to your industry and niche.  These will be the best for you because the search engines want to see links going to your website from related websites and blogs.  If you're in the pet industry and getting backlinks from car dealerships, you won't see a huge boost in the rankings lol




In Conclusion
If you've been blogging for a while, you likely know all of the points I touched on above.  If you're newer to blogging, you likely didn't know a lot of what I covered and I may have just saved you from obtaining a penalty from the search engines   I encourage you to always research something before you post because you never know what could actually hurt your website.  You may think you're doing something right, but you could actually be harming your website.  Outsource the work if you don't have time, or just can't understand how it works, so you're guaranteed to be safe.



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Thanks!

Razzy