Post valuable, keyword-targeted content to your blog

It is obvious that anything you post to your blog should be valuable. Readers simply won’t want to read it otherwise. Here the phrase, “Think before you speak” applies. In other words, “Think before you blog.” Think of important, valuable information you can pass on to your reader, and provide it in a way that will entice them and make them want to return to read what you have to say next.

The second part of this seed is a bit more complicated. You can have the most valuable content on the internet, but if no one ever sees it, it isn’t doing you any good. In order to make sure that they do, you want to use keyword-targeted content in your blog postings.

Businesses have been using keyword-targeted ads for a long time, but many fail to realize how important it can be for blog content. Since search engines pick up on these words and make your blog pop up in searches, they can be a valuable tool to increase traffic to your site. You don’t, however, just litter your content with a few words and hope they get picked up by search engines. There are a few steps you can take to be sure you get the right keywords.

1. Keyword Research—Research to see how many people are searching for your site. There are tools available from Google and other software developers that can help make the process easier for you.

2. Target low competition, niche keywords—Google Adwords can be very helpful to see how competitive a keyword is before you decide to use it.

3. Don’t focus only on your main keywords—Try to think outside the box. Targeting keywords isn’t just about the most popular keywords. For example, if you’re a realtor, just targeting your blog for real estate will get too many hits for you to even be noticed. Target for specific real estate instead, and you’ll get visitors to your site others targeting just real estate won’t get.

4. Think about what your target market is looking for and put it on your site. Always think of your market first. They want quality content, not keywords. Once you have the quality content, you should write between 200-300 content words for each keyword used. That’s around three to five keyword phrases on each page. Don’t force it. Keywords have to be used naturally, so they flow within the content

5. Customize titles and descriptions for each page—Search engines can’t figure out what your subject is or the relevance of each page if you use the same tags for all the pages

6. Prepare a site map telling where everything is on your site—Search engines like site maps. Although you’ll get around 1% click through rate, a site map will really help those who know what to do with them.

7. Build popularity—Just doing the above steps won’t get you on the first few pages of the search pages. To do that, you need to build popularity. One way is having sites that link to yours. You can offer important information so others will want to link to your site. If you don’t spam, and are a well-linked site, you’ll do better in search engines

Once you’ve written your valuable content and placed in the targeted keywords, there are other places you can use the keywords as well:

1. URL—Using keywords count more in the root domain than sub domains, but good root domains are often difficult to get. Try to put in at least one keyword in the root domain if you can’t use the entire phrase. If not, putting it in the sub domain will still help you rank higher.

2. Titles of Pages—Page titles are excellent for search engine rankings. Using a keyword in the title of each page, especially at the beginning of the page title, will help in the rankings.

3. Inbound Links using Anchor text—This is the part of the text of a link that is clickable. If your anchor text is the targeted keyword, it will improve rankings for the keyword.

4. Header—Header texts, like page titles, count more in keyword rankings than content does. Having one part of your header with a keyword will be an advantage for you.

5. Bolded Text—Bold text stands out on the page, but it also stands out as a keyword in search rankings.

6. Image ALT Text—Search engines don’t read images, but you can put keyword-driven ALT text on images. This will help the page rankings. For some websites, being found in an image search can be valuable.

These are only a few suggestions, but they are valuable ones. Using the right keywords in your blog is an imperative seed to its growth.

Now that you understand the relevance of keyword optimization, maybe it is time to re-evaluate some of your old content. Maybe you’ll find some valuable content that needs to be altered using keywords and used again. Many of those old blogs that you posted that are like seeds planted on rocky ground, can be replanted with the right keywords and can thrive.

Doing this is simpler than it may seem. Here’s all you need to do:

1. Look at the analytics and find your most popular posts.

2. Read them and think how you could summarize them using only three to four words.

3. Once you’ve got a blog topic figured out, look for what people are searching on Google—You can use Google’s Keyword Tool, put in your description, and Google will do the rest. It will give you the results for your phrases and for similar phrases.

4. Look for keywords that have low/medium competition. This will help you to rank easier for those words.

5. Check the phrases to be sure they’re targeting the audience you want to target.

6. Optimize your blog post—Take the keywords you’ve developed and put them in your blog post. Make sure to keep the content in readable format.

Work the best keyword or phrase into your title.