Almost everyone I know has a blog, even if it's only blog posts that they make on their Myspace page. A lot of people have something to say, and they find putting their thoughts down on virtual paper via a blog to be a great way to do it. And it is. First of all, there's an electronic record of your thoughts that you can look back on in the future, and, even more appealing in many circumstances, blogs are made in such a way that other people can easily find the material you've written.
On MySpace or other Social Network and Social Blogging platforms, that can be as simple as putting a status update or a bulletin out to your friends and letting them know you've put up a new blog post.
If you want to take your blogging to the next level, however, you will want to go beyond having a blog that your friends and family read, and write posts that are geared to get your content into the search engines.
This is where many people lose the thread. They aren't clear about how to do this.
It's actually fairly simple.
The first part consists of finding the right phrase, or "keyword," to write about. There are many ways to go about this, but here is what I think is the simplest and most effective. First, think of a broad idea you want to write about. If you keep a fitness blog, maybe that broad idea is "eating healthy." Next, plug that idea into a keyword research tool. There are thousands of these, of both the free and paid variety, all across the web. My favorite free tool is the good old Google AdWords external keyword tool. I figure, if I'm trying to rank in Google, why not get my information directly from them?
After the keyword tool processes your query, you will have a list of more specific phrases, as well as the search volume for those phrases. You will look for phrases that get medium to heavy searches and research those further.
The next step involves Google itself. When you see a phrase you're interested in, type it into Google inside quotation marks. This will tell you the amount of pages already in the search engines which have those exact words in that exact order. Those pages are your real competition.
When you have located a phrase that has medium to heavy search traffic and medium to low competition, you are ready to write your blog post!
When you write your post, make sure you use the phrase in the title of the post, and make sure your permalink structure is set up so that the link to the post includes the title. Use the phrase in the first sentence of your post, and the last. Try to use it once or twice in the main content of the article, as well, but don't push it if it's not natural. You don't want your writing to sound stilted.
Of course, this is a very simplified and basic tutorial in keywords research. For more in-depth information on professional blogging, check out http://MelaniedeJonge.com |
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