Keyword Difficulty Analysis: How to Choose the right SEO keywords

A successful SEO campaign almost always relies on the keywords used. As elements that search strings are matched against, they can propel a website forward, helping it rank on search engines. The significance of individual keywords, however, is slowly dwindling, and keyword-based search engine optimization is losing its strength. Blame it on black hat practices that, even when they're being cracked down, have left lasting effects. This is because there are now factors that are far more important than keyword presence:

• Keyword placement matters more than usage frequency. That is, using keywords in the title tag and header has more weight than using them five times in the content.

• Using synonyms is more than acceptable. Now that Google is more sophisticated in interpreting data of a website, keyword specificity is fading. So even if different key phrases are used, as long as they have similar context, Google can place them in the exact same category, theoretically.

• Semantic search is making a huge difference on user searches. In the past, Google dissects search queries by words. A search query about "running shoes Utah", for example, would return anything that may be related with running, shoes and even events in Utah. But with search semantics, Google interprets the meaning of the whole search query rather than just the individual words.

Along with these changes is the need to take a different approach to keyword research. Keywords still matter, but they need to be perfect to be really effective. So whatever process you have been following for as long as you can remember, you should completely forget. Even if you did rank, it turns out that you have been doing keyword research all wrong. Rather than research for high volume, low competition and good CPC keyword, or effective latent semantic index keywords, you should use keyword difficulty analysis instead.

What does Keyword Difficulty Analysis mean?

Keyword difficulty is defined as a factor that helps determine how easy or difficult it is for a website to rank based on a particular keyword. So it's no longer about short-tail or long-tail, and high or low, because other factors now come into play, such as the following:

- The number of pages currently ranking for a specific keyword
- The number of pages bidding on a keyword in paid search campaigns
- The volume and cost per click of a keyword for a particular month

If you want to go down to specifics, you also need to look into queries that you must compete for based on three elements:

1. Your competition or the number of indexed pages for a particular query
2. The authority or ranking strength of a website based on the quantity and quality of incoming links
3. The relevance of well-ranking websites in terms of how they match certain search queries with consideration to factors, such as on-page ranking and off-page signals.

Difficulty analysis also entails estimating keyword difficulty. The easiest way to do this is to check out strong and weak search results based on a keyword or key phrase that is widely used. Between "running shoes Utah" and "Nike running shoes", the latter is harder to rank with, especially for normal and less-popular blogs. There is no way you can compete with high authority blogs.

A search query on "Pebble Time review" would return the following results:

All of these make up the top 10 strong results, which is clearly hard to outrank by less authoritative websites.

But if you use long-tail keywords, there is a possibility that the results will include forums, non-relevant sites, YouTube videos, Yahoo Answers and other websites that will be easier to outrank or those that make up weak results. So, what you want is a keyword that will return weak search results.

But because there are no hard-and-fast rules in difficulty analysis, you need to use tools at your disposal. A keyword difficulty tool can come in many shapes and sizes, so to speak. It's not just a specific type of software, but a set of procedures that lets you identify keyword difficulty.

Perform difficulty analysis based on several principles

Competing Pages

Find out who your competitions are for a particular keyword or phrase. Simply type in the search terms you want to use on a search engine and check out the results. As a blog or a business, your competitors are other blogs or companies that are providing the same products or services, and using the same set of keywords. The top ten is your strongest competition.

You can further narrow down your search by looking into the number of pages being indexed that use the same search terms on the title. To do this, use one of Google's advanced search operator "allintitle", which will display websites where the keywords appear in the title.

Now that you know your competitors, it is important that you don’t make any decisions based solely on the data that you collected. Just use them as an indicator, since there are plenty of other elements that will keep you off the first page.

Top 10 Search Results

If you want to determine the metrics involved in keyword difficulty, determine the top ranking sites related to the terms you intend to use. Getting results is easy. It is making the searches non-personalized that is challenging, although not impossible. You just need to use the right tools to de-personalize your search and get the results that matter more. Using Chrome browser in incognito mode is one good example. What this does is to remove results returned based on search data and preferences, such as ads, news, images and YouTube videos.

Number of Links

Top-ranking pages are likely to have a significant number of external and domains pointing links based on certain key terms. If you use the same keywords, you would definitely have a hard time ranking. But if there is a top-ranking website with just a few direct links, you have a door of opportunity. Using Open Site Explorer or Majestic SEO, you can acquire a number of linking domains a website has. But know that a site with few high quality links can have the same authority as one with plenty of low quality links, which is why further analysis is necessary.

Off-Page Optimization

How strong a competitor website's off-page optimization is reflected on the number, authority and type of links it has, including the backlinks. Keyword difficulty analysis will look into page authority, domain authority, keyword in anchor text and the diversity of unique linking root domain.

On-Page Optimization

Now that you know who your competitors are, find out how well optimized they are. Think like a search engine and look for different signals that will help your keywords rank easily and effectively. 

      • Keyword in title tag
      • Length of the title tag
      • Keyword in H1
      • Keyword in image alt text
      • Keyword in domain or URL
      • Keyword representation in anchor text or external links
      • Content quality
      • Optimization level (over optimized or not)
      • Use of questionable SEO practices
      • Internal linking architecture of a website

You can also keep your evaluation simple by just ranking each page's optimization as none, minimal, over, fair, decent or good, and excellent. Regardless of which step you take, however, this process takes a lot of work. If you want to cut down on the amount of effort and time you spend, you should filter your keyword list to a manageable size.

Perform difficult analysis using Google search operators 

Google can be your best friend in difficulty analysis, and not just in knowing your competitions or the keywords they use. To maximize Google, however, you must use three of its special operators.

As already mentioned, allintitle returns results that contain your search terms on the title. allinurl, on the other hand display results with the keyword included in the URLs, and allintext returns search results with the keyword appearing within the content.

How do you use them to your advantage? Using the keywords "nike running shoes", for example, run a keyword difficulty analysis in Chrome. Don't forget to search in incognito mode to keep results organic and non-personalized. Take note of the total results and those that returned using Google's advanced search tools. The data you collect will look similar to the one below:

Keyword: nike running shoes

Results with allintext: nike running shoes

Results with allinurl: nike running shoes

Results with allintitle: nike running shoes

What do the figures tell you?

• If the total results are equal or close to 1,000,000, you have higher chances of ranking on the first page.
• If the results with allintext are just 50% more than the total results, keyword difficulty is very high.
• If the results with allinurl and results with allintitle is less or close to 1,000, the chances of ranking on the first page is high provided that certain criteria are met:

      o 2000+ words in-depth blog post
      o Proper image optimization
      o High Flesch Reading Score
      o Quick Load Spee
      o Good Social Shares
      o Efficient Inter Linking
      o Several high DA, PA Backlinks
      o Perform difficulty analysis using specialized checker

What is great about using Google search operators is that you will know your competitors during your research. But you can always take a shortcut through a keyword difficulty tool.

Perform keyword difficulty analysis using difficulty tools

Keyword Inspector

This is a free tool that you can use to analyze how difficult it is to rank a specific keyword. Every search term is ranked as Very Easy, Easy, Moderate, Difficult and Very Difficult.

To start using it, you must first create an account. Once that is done, you can then run an analysis by typing in the keyword on the input box, choosing a country and then hit "Submit". You will get a tabulated result, with the keyword difficulty analysis indicated at the last column. It is highly recommended that you use search terms that is ranked moderate or less difficult.

Take note, however, that search results may vary from one country to the next. So don't make decisions based on them alone. Instead, combine it with other keyword difficulty tool.

MOZ Keyword difficulty tool

This tool is more comprehensive and comes with other useful features, making it an ideal choice. It may not be free, but it does give good value for your money. You can run 20 reports at one time, and a standard subscription has a daily limit of 400 reports.

To run a difficulty analysis, simply type in one or more keywords on the input box. You can separate the terms using a comma, tab or by typing it on a new line. Choose a search engine (Google, Bing, etc.) and country, and then hit "Check Difficulty" button. You will then get a report with the difficulty score and ranking factor indicated. The score is between 1% and 100%, with 1% as being easy and 100% as being very competitive.

What is great about this difficulty analysis tool is that you have the option to export the report as CSV, in case you want to run you own analysis. There is also a "Compare" button that will give you an idea which keyword has the lowest difficult score, yet has the most search volume - an excellent combination. Simply check on the keywords you want to compare, two or more at a time, and then hit Compare.

Take note that the data of search volume will always be for Bing even if you choose Google as your search engine. Don't worry though, since this would not affect the results in any way.

SEMrush

Originally a professional SEO tool designed for digital marketers, SEMrush has recently introduced a tool for keyword difficulty analysis where you can bulk check ranking of multiple keywords. It is not free, but you do get a 14-day free trial period. Look for the keyword difficulty analyzer under Tools, type in your keywords and then search for their difficulty score. You can put in a maximum of 100 search terms per line.

The great thing about this tool is that you get more in one go. That is, you not only learn about Keyword difficulty, but also Keyword Research, Competitors Analysis, and even Backlink Opportunities.

There are just a few examples of keyword difficulty tools that you can use. Among the three options, SEMrush is considered the simplest to use and is highly recommended for affiliate marketers and bloggers.

Keyword difficulty analysis can be done for app store optimization as well. Check out the result count to determine the number of apps targeting a particular keyword. Simply type in the search terms on the app store and both Apple and Google will show which apps use certain keywords. Another factor is volatility that provides a good indicator of how difficult it is to rank for a particular search term. Because finding volatility manually is hard, look for tools that you can use.

Once you have a list of keywords, sort and filter them out into different categories, such as immediate and short-term keyword targets, medium-term keyword targets that need to be groomed and grown, and long-term keyword targets that can be obtained through sustained effort.

Keyword difficulty analysis may seem like a new concept, but it is the new way of ranking in search engine results, which is why it is worth implementing in your SEO campaign.

7 Search Engine Optimization Tips for Bloggers

SEO, as you might have already know, is an acronym for search engine optimization. In the simplest of words, it's the way search engines like Google.com, Yahoo.com, Bing.com and others present your page in users' search results on their sites.

Cool, how do they that?

Well, they do that via sophisticated software tools, called spiders. Consider the whole internet as an empty room, with air particles as websites. Now sneak a spider into that room. Each tiny step that this spider would take now is essentially crawling a website (as the room is dark and full of websites). This is how search engines crawl through the web picking up site after site, studying them and ranking them. This ranking is important, really important. A higher ranked website by Google will always be on the first page of Google's search results for a related query compared to a lower ranked one.

So, in order to get ranked higher, you and I need SEO. SEO is like black pepper without which fried egg might not taste 'that' tastier. In simple words, in order for search engines to find your site and rank it higher than others in your field, you need to optimize it. Let's see how with these 7 simple tips.

Ways to SEO Optimize your Blog

Before starting with our 7 simple tips for a quality SEO, it's important to broadly classify those tips into two basic areas, on the basis of origin:

On-page Optimization

Refers to optimization of your actual web content including your HTML code, your text, as well as graphic content.

Off-page optimization

Off-page optimization, however, deals with things like backlinks (hyperlinks pointing to you site from other websites, apps and networks).

1. Create SEO Friendly Blog Post Titles

Post titles are important for SEO. They really are since they are deal makers or breakers. Whenever you write something, make sure you give proper attention to the post's title. Make your titles simple, intriguing, descriptive and gullible so that people may know what is this all about and what to expect. An even better approach is to wear searchers shoes while giving a title and think how would you Google it if you were looking for content like this.

Also, don't forget to include keywords in your title and keep it under 70 characters (or search engines would crop it before looking).

2. Improve the quality of your content

If you think 'content' isn't important for SEO, think again! Your content is the most important part of your site. While writing, don't copy-paste from elsewhere, don't stuff it with keywords alone, don't bombard it with images and multimedia files and don't write any lesser than 300 words. These all would affect your ratings quite poorly.

So, write original, use keywords in scenarios instead of straying them around (like I didn't use SEO here, SEO there in every next line), use images where they suffice and make sure you name them properly to appear in image search results, i.e. an image with the "img009.jpg" name would never appear in the image search results but "tips_to_success.jpg" would. The best would be to use text content and wrap them proper in HTML tags like <H2></H2> etc. (search engines likes content this way). Also, make sure your blog post's length is somewhere between 300-500 words - crossing over is fine but lesser isn't.

3. Keywords are keys

Keywords are terms that others may use to search for your content. While keywords are important for SEO, don't go on and stuff your site with keywords. This would make your content appear like a spam to spiders, who would neglect it henceforth.

Ideal is that once you have chosen your title (and included your keyword in it, as I have added keyword SEO in title above), use it in page URL, in your starting and ending paragraphs, as well as in article body where required without sounding awkward. Additionally, you may link it using anchor text to relevant resources in and out of site.

Adding keyword in the post URL using Custom Permalink

4. Meta-tags are important, but not 'that' much

If we had been living in early part of 21st century, meta tags might have done all the SEO for your site. Unluckily, we aren't. Google and other search engines have long left using meta-tags for finding site information. Hence, if someone tells you meta-tagging is all you need for your sites SEO, tell them it isn't.

Nevertheless, it's important that you use your keywords in your meta-data. Some themes already do that for you, if they don't (you can check that using page source or using view source code from browser), don't sweat. You can use 3rd party plugins like All in One SEO Pack and Scribe.

5. Socialize!

Make others talk about your site and share your content on social media sites or their blogs. It gets even better if somehow sites with high ratings link back to your site. This makes spiders think that you are someone important that everyone these days is talking about, resulting in enhancing your ratings dramatically.

Guest posting is another good approach for that. Comment on other sites, make friends with bloggers (best in business) and make them comment at yours. These tiny little things do matter a lot, resulting in enhanced SEO of your site.

6. Link in and Link-Out

Hyperlinks or Links are important from SEO perspective. You can use them to:

Link out to other sites, networks and posts, or even to your previous posts (also called inbound or backlinks) using anchor element with keyword.

Or even better, make others to link in to you, via sharing your content on their sites or social media networks.

As stated above, an even outstanding strategy for building links is guest posting.

7. Write Often

Sites with new content every day, or twice thrice a week have still far better ratings than those who post every fortnight. A better incoming content frequency makes spider come to your site regularly, resulting in better ratings and enhanced SEO.
Are we done then? Well, trust me - your sites rating is in your hands, not in Google or Yahoo. SEO is just about doing things neatly and in a sophisticated manner. Walk your site these 7 steps for a quality SEO and you will witness the difference yourself at Google, if no place else.

Remember, code clean, write original, socialize... this is what SEO is all about!

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The Basics of Google Analytics for Beginners

If you're a business owner or a member of a marketing team, you probably know that businesses depend upon data. Tracking trends and patterns is what allows you to get ahead of the dips in the market, and make informed decisions on the direction of your company.

Those same rules that apply to business apply to owning a website. In order to deliver the best possible experience and ensure that customers from around the world are able to access your site, you need to understand from where traffic is coming from and how to leverage that information to your benefit.

Setting Your Site Up With A Tracking ID

Google analytics won't start collecting data from your website until you've implemented a tracking code into your website's files. The tracking code is basically a block of JavaScript code that will collect data about the html that visitor used to get to your site, any cookies that the visitors has collected during their browsing history, and information about what type of browser the person is using.

The importance of this information provides you with information on how to conform your web-site to the target audience, especially in terms of design. If customers are visiting your website from an eCommerce directory, you may want to modify those links so that the customers arrive at a landing page instead of a home page. If more customers are using smartphones and tablets instead of laptop browsers, you may have to redesign the site so that it is responsive and can be easily read from a small screen.

In order to track each individual page on the website, you will need to add a tracking code before the </head> code of your template. If you are using a site like WordPress or Joomla! that depends on templates, you may just have to add the tracking code on the main HTML index file. Keep in mind that it can take upwards of 24-hours for Google to begin collecting information and importing that data to your dashboard, so don't expect to see measurable results right away.

Tutorial: How to Add Google Analytics to Blogger

Researching the Data

Once you insert the code into your site, it will begin tracking data from anyone who visits your site. This data is then sent back to the Google servers and stored in your Google Analytics profile. From there, you can determine what type of information that you want to look at.

The two features of Google Analytics that are often most useful to new users is the ability to track where customers are coming from, and the ability to see keywords that have been effective in drawing in audiences.

Traffic Origins

Open up your Google Analytics dashboard and click on 'Acquisition'. You should see a few options, but you want to pull 'All Referrals' so that you can the entire list of visitors.

Next to the referral path will show a few links with a number of how many people visited your site from that link. From here you can click on the link and find out the reason for the traffic. Maybe someone has written a review on the service, you can check to see if the advertisement campaign you are operating is producing results.

Keywords

Within the same 'Acquisition' directory is another option called 'Search Engine Optimization'. Click on this link and then click on 'Queries' to look up a list of keywords being used to describe your site. The dashboard will display an overview of up to 1,000 words or phrases used on Google that brought new visitors to your site. You can use this information to modify your posts and producing content to increase the results of certain key phrases that you feel would benefit your customer outreach.

Demographics

Underneath the audience tab, you can also track demographics. This little option will allow you to view the age, gender, and interests of individual users and segments of your visiting population. Say for example you run a senior care facility for the retired and want to put together a A/B split test to determine which advertising campaign works best. After adding the campaign to a landing page or section of your site, you can look back and find out if retired citizens are the ones responding to your ads, or if you are just bringing in traffic from younger generations who may not be interested in your services.

Custom Campaign Tagging

Custom campaign tagging is more of an advanced feature, but once you get used to the Google Analytics interface, you can use this to separate your campaigns and easily filter through data. Maybe you just want to find out who is coming to your site from your email newsletters, and not from the general site. Google Analytics will allow you to post special links to your content on those channels of communication and then view these results under the acquisition tab and then campaigns.

Determining What Works, and What Doesn't

Using the tools that Google Analytics provides at your disposal allows you to really determine what type of experience you want to provide your customers. Within the first month of use, if start to see trends or patterns in data that you feel you feel you can improve upon, you can use this information as a guide to edit your sites design and layout.

Getting used to the program might seem overwhelming at first, but once you jump right in and start playing around all the features, you'll get the hang of it in no time. Google Analytics really is an important tool that every website owner should have.

How to Optimize Images for Better Search Engine Rankings

When search engines start indexing the pages on your site, they don't just focus on the writing. Web crawlers employed by services like Google and Bing shuffle through your site's structural code looking for any relevant information that they might offer to their customers. Some of the information includes things like backlinks, tags and even images.

Images make up a big part of any website. They help to excite the visual senses of readers and offer a little extra entertainment value. What most blog owners don't realize is that all of the photos that they upload to their site aren't confined to their site alone. Crawlers make sure that these images also show up within their respective search engines sites.

Image searches can have the effect of drawing in large numbers of new readers that were just looking through content in Google images. You can benefit from this traffic and increase your average subscriber by practicing image optimization.

Image Optimization Tip #1: Alt Tags & File Names

Visitors may love images, but computers don't. Computers are designed to do what you tell them without violating any of the parameters. When web crawlers come across images on a website, they really don't know what to do with it because they are made to collect information, not interpret it. The solution to this problem is to optimize images and appropriately label your alt tags so that they display the correct content when someone goes to look for it.

For example, let's say you upload a picture of your dog, and label the "alt" tag by the dog's name, 'Frank'. The web crawler is going to read the alt tag without ever realizing it's a picture of a dog; therefore, the crawler will come to the conclusion that it needs to display the image when someone run a search for 'Frank'.

The minor word choice mistakes may not affect the operations of your website, or how your image is displayed, but it will affect the search results of others and the traffic that comes into your website. Whereas you may have been able to attract the dog lovers in the world using image optimization of your dog tagged 'dog', you are now drawing in crowds searching for their uncle "Frank".

To include the alt tag, simply add alt="this is your alt text" to your image tag. Here's an example:

<img src="pug-dog.jpg" alt="frank dog" />

But you don't have to touch the html code of the image. Once the picture is uploaded, click on it and you will see the "Properties" setting. Add the alt text inside the box and hit OK:

This goes the same for file names on a website. You need to optimize images and file names on everything that you decide to save to your website directory so that this information can be appropriately indexed and be used as a search term. You could name the file of your dog Frank, "pug-dog.jpg", which would encourage the search engine to add Frank into searches being performed with the phrase 'pug dog'. Alt tags and file names play an important interpretation role between you and the machine that makes your blog possible.

Image Optimization Tip #2: Add A Caption

After uploading your images, you should always add a caption to the image, so that average browser understands what they're looking at. This gives your website a more professional appearance and will help to keep people on your page.

Not everyone that comes across your picture using a Google Image search is looking for your blog. Maybe they just want to download the image, and that's all you'll ever get from them. The important thing is that they found your photo relevant to their search, and decided to navigate to your site in order to save it for their own use.

The longer those users stay on the site, the better it looks for you because it plays a role in the "bounce rate". Bounce rate refers to when someone clicks on a link, realizes it's not what they're looking for, and then immediately goes back to the search engine. If you can reduce the number of times that this happens by providing captions and intriguing content that will make people want to stick around, your SEO ranking will improve.

Image caption and SEO

Image Optimization Tip #3: File Size

Improving your bounce rate can be tough because the attention span of the everyday Internet user is incredibly short. It may be as short as 8 seconds. High bounce back rates and slow loading sites can be the death of most blogs because no one wants to wait for the content to load. By the time your website finally loads with the content that you need, they could have easily visited two or more sites and found what they need from someone who was better prepared to handle their traffic.

Optimize images so that you are able to keep the file size as small as possible while retaining the quality of the photo. Images taken from DSLR camera - although they may look great - can be up to 1.4 MB in size if you take them directly off your camera and upload them on your blog. This type of space is massive for any everyday blog, and will hurt your SEO ratings.

Use Photoshop or one of many online services like Google Picasa to rescale your images or reduce the file size. Two services that can perform this ability for free and do a great job are Yahoo's Smushit and Kraken. When you access either site, they will allow you to upload the picture on the site and download the new image optimization versions for use on your Blogger site.

Putting It All Together

At the end of the day, the quality of your site and overall SEO ranking isn't just about what you have to say. It's the entire package of what you have to offer. Optimize images every chance you get and use the strategies discussed above. Now that you know that you might have been neglecting images all along, you can make necessary adjustments and start to see even better results from all your hard work.

5 Easy Ways to Improve the SEO of a blog & Boost Traffic

5 easy ways to improve the SEO of a blog 

A blogger needs to know at least the minimum on SEO. For it, you don't need to be an SEO expert but you need to know the minimum so that your posts are well indexed in the search engines.

The phrase "content is king" is one of the widest spread Internet memes being used by so many bloggers, with the idea that you should focus on having quality content, while the rest don't matter much. This is not true. Quality content is important, but it shouldn't be the only concern of a blogger today. In addition to producing quality content, your text needs to be optimized for the search engines.

Boost traffic & increase SERP visibility with SEO

5 easy ways to improve the SEO of a blog

Now, let's see what would be the basics that any blogger needs to learn about SEO and other simple SEO knowledge. Below are 5 easy tips to improve the SEO of your blog:

1. Define the keyword

When you write a post, it is recommended to choose the keyword (or term) suitable for your text. What you want is that this keyword - or term - to be searched on Google, and then get your post among the top. For this, you need to use this keyword a few times in the text.

For example, here the keyword could be SEO, but this term is too generic and I could hardly get in the top for this search. Then I'll work with a phrase or a long tail keyword, so that this post will rank for the term "easy ways to improve the SEO of a blog". I will use this phrase a few times, but without overdoing it.

2. Use the keyword in the post title

Now that I have defined the keyword, I will use it in the post title. This step is very important, and certainly will help you to get a better rank in search engines. As you can see, what I have in the title is the easy ways to improve the SEO of a blog keyword, along with other words to form an attractive and optimized title for SEO.

3. Use the keyword in the H2 tags

You must also use heading tags (h2, h3) in your posts. Here, I am using the keyword "easy ways to improve the SEO of a blog" in a H2 heading. Do this always, because it also helps to become well positioned in the search results. If you don't know or don't understand what are the heading tags, I would suggest to do a further research on this subject.

4. Use the keyword in the text

Make use of your chosen keywords throughout the text. Especially in the first paragraph (please note that I have repeated the title in italics in the first sentence). But be careful when doing this, there is a maximum and minimum limit for that. A good keyword density is between 1.5% to 4.5% for best results. Less than that will have no effect and more than that can alert the search engines and your text might be considered spam.

5. Publish Posts with 300 words or more

Posts under 300 words have little chance to be among the top results in search engines. Of course, you will be able to rank for multiple keywords that are less popular with less than 300 words, but for the most competitive keywords that have the potential to bring a greater number of visits, it will be nearly impossible.

Thus, it is recommended to write posts with more than 300 words. It's not hard when you really understand the topic you're talking about.

Conclusion

As you can see, with some simple SEO techniques you can improve the traffic coming to your blog from the search engines. I hope you enjoyed these 5 easy ways to improve the SEO of a blog!

The difference between white hat SEO and black hat SEO

The search engine optimization (SEO) is a good chance to promote your blog on Google search results and other search engines. For those who don't understand how SEO works, I've posted some articles on this blog that may help, but it's important to understand that there are good and bad techniques that could have a direct impact on your ranking. So, in this post I'll talk about the terms known to those who are familiar with SEO - the black and white hat - and we will get to know what's good and what is not when we think about optimizing our website and its content.

What is black hat seo?

From the 'SEO dictionary', the term black hat has to do with the abusive techniques that will force the search engines to look at a specific site and rank it. This might work at first, but the algorithms can already see some of these techniques that have become common for a fast result.

Such practices to trick the search engines are, for example, the excessive use of keywords, especially in headings and subheadings; transparent keywords to the user - the so-called hidden text, automatically generated content, pages redirecting automatically to other content and more.

What is white hat seo?

The white hat has to do with the good techniques in the 'eyes' of search engines. These are considered ethical techniques for the ranking, helping, thus, the positioning of a website or blog. However, working the white hat is a process that requires dedication and results may take longer to appear (this is why so many people opt for black hat in order to 'try' something more 'effective') but the results could be much more stable and satisfactory.

Keep in mind that Google has good tricks up its sleeve to penalize anyone who doesn't act in accordance with the policies and rules of their website - this includes removing your page from any of the positions. Fair enough, after all, why Google would 'reward' somebody with the top spot if he doesn't provide good content for his users and, at the same time, doesn't meet the requirements of the algorithm?

For those who are interested and want to stay on top of Google search results, visit the webmaster guidelines page. There, you can find further information about how to create a good content, how the design of your blog/site should be and how to work with your links. Also, you can find mentions about black hat techniques.

How to Write SEO Optimized Blog Posts

I'm not a SEO Expert, nor what you will read further is a top secret, but this is about the basic optimization that everyone should apply in order to write seo optimized blog posts. And with these techniques, effort, and a bit of patience, you can occupy the best places in the search results of different search engines.

Obviously, not all scenarios are the same, neither all blogs are positioned in the same manner, some might have greater competition than others depending on how popular is the topic that they handle; therefore, when it comes to web ranking, there's no specific time that applies for all. Having said this, let's get into the subject.

Focus on a topic

Whatever the topic of your blog is, when you try to write a seo optimized blog post, focus on a specific subject that has a clear purpose, with no distractions. For example, if you write about "Digital Cameras", then the beginning and ending of your post should be only about it. Don't start talking about digital cameras and end up telling about what you have done last weekend. A reader goes to a page because is looking for a specific information. So, unless it is not a personal blog (where you write about your daily life), do not deviate from the topic.

Define the post title

The post title should be short and to the point, so that you can briefly summarize the content of the post, but you shouldn't abuse this either. Although it has to be concise, don't try to 'save' words which might be keys to the search.

Examples:

Collection of all the cameras that have been released last year on the market

The best digital cameras of 2013

Clearly, the first one hasn't been defined very much, and the second one is not only more accurate, but it is also more relevant for what people are searching on the internet.

The keywords

Keywords are those terms that the most people are searching for on the internet and you should try focusing on them when writing a post; these keywords need to be included throughout the entire post, but be careful to not over-stuff keywords into your content.

Example:

During the fourth week of the technology, there were many products that are utilized today, and the most famous experts gave a speech on them.

At the opening of the fourth Technology Week, the experts talked about various topics, including how to choose a digital camera, had discussions about the pros and cons of the iPad, and which are the best smartphones.

In the first example, we have written without paying attention to any terms. While, in the second one, we used phrases that are searched on the internet by the most users.

So, the most popular keywords should be included wisely without cluttering your posts with them, or it can be counterproductive.

Again, these keywords should be included in the posts title, as well.

Rely on synonyms

While it's a good strategy to use specific keywords, we should not limit ourselves to a single word. It is recommended using synonyms because users do not name things in same way and using less keywords, we can avoid leaving the impression that we are being too repetitive and insistent.

Examples:

For those who like good quality pictures, Nikon D7000s Digital Camera is a 16.2 megapixel digital camera that takes great pictures.

For those who like good quality images, Nikon D7000s is a 16.2 megapixel digital camera that takes excellent pictures.

In the first example, we have repeated the word 'digital camera' and 'pictures' twice. While, in the second one, we used the digital camera keyword once and changed the word 'pictures' with 'images'.

This way, the reader will find a greater diversity of words and might enjoy the article more.

Using bold and italics

A good practice when you write seo optimized blog posts, would be to make the keywords bold by wrapping them in strong tags, so that they will stand out from the rest. But keep in mind that this shouldn't be done with CSS, but with HTML, i.e. they should not be tagged with font-weight: bold; but rather with <b> or even better, with <strong>.

Examples:

For those who like good quality images, Nikon D7000s is a 16.2 megapixel digital camera that takes excellent pictures.

The result seems to be the same, but it is not. Although these three keywords are in bold, only one is more attractive to robots, which is the first:

For those who like <strong>good quality images</strong>, <b>Nikon D7000s</b> is a 16.2 megapixel <span style="font-weight: bold;">digital camera</span> that takes excellent pictures.

The same goes for the italics. Use them for highlighting important words, but don't place them between font-style: italic; but rather between <i> or even better <em>.

For those who like <strong>good quality images</strong>, <em>Nikon D7000s</em> is a 16.2 megapixel <span style="font-style: italic;">digital camera</span> that takes excellent pictures.

Again, the first one has a better chance of ranking than the others. Thus, it is recommended to highlight the keywords in bold and italics, or to put them between <strong> and </strong>, or between <em> and </em>.

Using External Links

Some may say that we shouldn't use links in the posts because this way we are giving away our Page Rank. This is not quite true. Using referral links to sites that have already shaped their credibility, will also help us to shape our own. Certainly, we should not flood our posts with links, but we can do it when is needed and especially with sites that talk about the same topics as our own.

Another important thing to mention is that, we should avoid putting the typical "click here" or similar texts. When you put a link, the anchor text should be fairly descriptive.

Examples:

<a href="Link URL">Click here</a> to know more

More information about <a href="Link URL">digital cameras</a>

In the first example, the anchor text is not relevant and descriptive, but in the second it is.

Rank with your images

Posts with images are not only visually appealing, but might help the reader to understand what you are talking about. So, whenever you can, use an image in your post to illustrate the writing, but don't overdo it. Many images or very large images can slow the loading time of the blog.

New and relevant content

You should focus not only on writing many posts, but also making them relevant to your readers. New and original content is more attractive to the search engines, than a copy & paste (actually, the last gets penalized). So try to write new stuff, even if you think that all has been said. Each person has a different way of saying things.

Also, always get informed before writing a post. Do a research and see if the information is valid; based on that, you will gain the trust of your readers.

Final Words

With these few techniques you can increase the chances of ranking your posts higher in search engines. As I mentioned earlier, these aren't things that no one heard about, but I know that many are beginners and may not know how to write seo optimized blog posts.

It does not hurt repeating that the results won't appear overnight, but with some effort and patience, you should see the desired results over time.

Top three qualities of a successful blogger

The qualities of a blogger should be attended at all times in order to become someone popular on the internet. A blogger should have plenty of ideas for creative writing, along with a truckload of motivation. The results sought will not come overnight and there's no guarantee that this will be easy.

These are the two things that you need in order to fulfill your dream of running a successful blog: a lot of exclusive content and readers' loyalty. In each case, time is required to develop the success. This is a process and not a short-term event.

Related: How to Write SEO Optimized Blog Posts

Top Qualities To Become a Successful Blogger

Here are three qualities of a blogger who as a site administrator will need to have, if your goal is to manage a successful blog.

Patience

A successful blog is a product of time and effort and for this, you will need patience. As I said before, the results will not appear quickly overnight, so it is important to realize this from the start. If you are constantly trying to develop new and creative ideas for writing on your blog and, at the same time, you are worried whether you will see any results, this will only make things more difficult.

The building of a successful business online is a "long term" effort and you must decide if you accept this challenge or not. This is one the most important qualities of a blogger.

Credibility

Much of the traffic of any successful blog results from its unique content, as well as its credibility. In fact, the quality of what's in the site, will have a direct impact on what will become viral visitors that are coming to your platform. If you will provide quality content, people will talk about your blog, and once they do it, others may come to see what you have. It depends on you to publish useful and accurate information and your readers will do the rest.

Consistency

Maintaining a steady stream of creative writing ideas is vital to be able to constantly update the blog. The frequency of publication to a proper schedule is related to the amount of time you have available and your level of motivation. However, it is recommended to establish a sort of consistency, so that people can schedule their own visits accordingly. Just remember that the more often you write, the more people will visit, so their loyalty will grow faster and their referrals will be extended.

To become a popular blogger, it is important to have a healthy source of creative writing ideas, along with a lot of patience and motivation. Ultimately, it will be up to you, as a site administrator, to provide the three qualities of a blogger that we discussed above, who is searching tirelessly his goal of having a successful blog. In the end, your own motivation and patience will be the glue with which all the elements will be put together so that your dream will come true.

How to do natural SEO on Blogger

Although many insist that blogs hosted on free servers, such as Blogger, are not ideal for getting your blog well-ranked, the truth is that a blog hosted by Blogger can be really fast and well positioned on the Internet if you are using the right SEO tools.

Now, given the latest updates from Google, the best would be hiring a specialized person. However, if you don't have the resources or you want to learn doing this job alone, you can choose to begin with the natural SEO.

Here are some tips to do natural SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Natural SEO Techniques for Blogger

Pick a Good Domain

We must try having our keyword included in the domain name, and even if this may sacrifice our branding, we can use the redirection.

Create Value Added Content

Not only rewrite articles, or write like they would be intended for us. When writing our posts, we should consider our target audience, i.e., giving advices, tips, suggestions or guidance on specific topics and aside, use links, anchor text and key phrases.

The topic of the links is important

They should be of quality and while, it's no longer required to place five or ten links within the text of your website, now what truly matters, is to make the link relevant to the context.

Finally, the domain, in value-added content and a right use of the internal and external links, will prove to be useless if we don't try to update our blog constantly.

How often should you update your blog?

You don't have to do this on daily basis, even if this may be ideal as, this way, we could achieve a greater relevance in search engines. But don't forget about your blog either. Let's say, two or three times a week would be enough. What should not happen is updating only three times a week and doing nothing next week.

Keep in mind that search engines happen to pass daily on our blog in order to index our content.

I hope that you find these SEO tips useful and if you would like to receive more tutorials by email, subscribe for free to this blog, check out the facebook page or add the RSS feed.

4 Alternatives to Google AdWords

Many think that Google AdWords is the only tool dedicated and available to perform a study such as a keyword search, but it isn't so, today I refute this idea by collecting some alternatives that, although are not equal to Google AdWords, at least encourage us to make good keyword analysis for the SEO of our website.

Going back a bit, for those unfamiliar with the main features and tools of Google AdWords, we can find a very simple interface yet complete in every sense.

- AdWords appearance has changed, however there is a chance of returning to the old design;
- allows you to place a phrase or keyword, a web site and use the categories;
- for a better keywords search, you can apply filters such as location, language and add custom fields (competition, local or global monthly searches, CPC, Ad share, etc.);
- displays keyword ideas in columns with the amount of local and global monthly searches and approximate CPC;
- you can download keyword ideas, search results in a format to open with Excel.

Having recalled and refreshed the memory a little with the characteristics of AdWords, now it is time to learn about other options both free and paid.

Google AdWords Alternatives

Bing Webmaster Tools: Bing may not be the tool that we had first thought of, however it wants to provide the best conditions for studying keywords.

After we register, to access the tool, go to Diagnostics & Tools and click on the second option on the list: Keyword Research.

SEMRush: Other freemium alternative that displays a very complete report of a particular keyword or website. However, it has limitations and if you opt for a PRO recurring plan you need to pay a monthly membership from $69.95 per month.

Ubersuggest: This nice and simple online tool searches keywords suggestion as well as potential titles for an article. Personally, I recommend it 100%.

Keyword Eye: If you are looking to perform a keyword research on a particular region, Keyword Eye will be your help. It also has the option of requesting the display of search volume or AdWords competition and a full report of anchor text, keywords and domain.

At first it offers a free plan with limitations and to enjoy all other benefits, we have to pay $9.99 per month.

How to Add Google Analytics to Blogger

Google Analytics is a platform created with the purpose of helping us to track the number of visits and page views on our blog, which also uses several filters to check exactly from where the visitors are coming via standard or custom reports.

Google Analytics is the leading free tool that has a good relationship with the internet marketing and offers suggestions and improvements or benefits for our website.

As Analytics is part of the variety of Google tools like Blogger, many bloggers still don't know if it is possible to add the tracking code in Blogger. Implementing analytics in Blogger is very quick and easy, so you don't need to be experts or web developers. Here's a small guide for placing the Google Analytics tracking ID on our blog.

Implementing Google Analytics on Blogger

1. Do you have a Google Analytics account? Then it's perfect. If you don't have one, please Register.
2. Within the account, we'll go to Admin and in the Property column, click the menu, then click Create new property, where we enter the information from the website.

3. Click on "Get Tracking ID" and it will provide a box with a code, select and copy the code (CTRL + C).

4. Now let's go to our Blogger account.
5. Look for your blog and click on it, then go to Template > click the Edit HTML button and paste the code previously generated in Analytics before the </head> tag (CTRL + F in order to find it).

And this would be the entire procedure. Within about 24 hours, we shall see the first statistics of our blog in Google Analytics, otherwise check the following:

- Double check that the code has no spaces or characters.
- Doesn't have errors in the configuration
- There are no poor implementation of the filters.
- The Flash plugin is working or javascript is enabled.
- You will have minor issues if you are receiving visits from China (this conflict is not yet solved, according to Google).

How to Increase Alexa Ranking of your Blog

The Alexa Rank in its time may have been pretty important for the SEO, however, these days is already losing its importance due to the changes in the algorithm that Google applies from time to time.

The company displays information about visitors of a website, which in turn, classifies this in a ranking, generating estimated statistics about visitor traffic and links pointing to the website. In a few words, the Alexa Rank does not directly affect SEO, but rather serves as a reference for measuring the traffic type, popularity by country and other metrics.

If you would like to enrich or have a good Alexa Rank of your website, here some ways to do it, with short-term results.

5 Ways to Increase the Alexa Rank

Daily Content: Try to publish at least 2 articles per day and within a month you may start to see some changes in the Alexa ranking.

Install Alexa Rank widgets: Besides notifying about the results of your Alexa ranking, they will also provide an estimate of how many backlinks your website has. There are three types of widgets: button with ranking and links, the other one with the ranking only, and finally, a graph with daily records of visits. Traffic Widgets

Alexa Toolbar: From experience, I would recommend installing the Alexa Toolbar, because once we access the website, Alexa will count this visit and thus, we may get better results in the ranking. Besides this, the toolbar will also provide you more information about the backlinks of a web site, popular pages, reviews, and more.

Request a review: To calculate the Alexa ranking of a website, not only the amount of daily and monthly visits will make a site popular, but the number of reviews or opinions made with stars will also play a role in the ranking. Ask your readers to do a review or purchase Alexa opinions about your website.

Number of backlinks: As I said before, the number of visits and reviews about a website used to calculate the Alexa rank, and the total number of quality backlinks, may increase the likelihood of achieving a higher ranking for your website.

On-Page SEO Tips for Blogger

We know that SEO Off Page refers to the search engine optimization techniques that can be done outside of your website, such as link wheels, reviews, social bookmarking, social media (references and followers), sidebar links, among other techniques. However, without a proper on-page seo optimization, all would sum up to a non-optimized webpage without quality, which will not reach the traffic expected to have. This is mostly because search engines (especially Google) pay much attention to the alt and title tags (for images), meta tags, internal links, robots and so on, in order to display the content of your web page to the user who made a specific query in the search.

To never fall in this depression of search engine optimization, you can choose a good and reliable blog platform like Blogger. If you are working only on Blogger, here are some on-page optimization tips that might help you to become successful in the blogging world and increase the daily traffic to your blog.

Basic On-Page SEO Tips For Blogger

Optimization of the robots.txt file: besides alerting Google search engine, this file also helps us to prevent certain pages being indexed by Google in order to protect our blog against duplicate content issues.

Title optimization: In the default blogger template, post titles are not optimized properly for the search engines. To solve this, we need to touch some code in the design and optimize both page and post titles.

Image optimization: Whether your blog is about pictures or images as general topics, by simply adding a keyword related to articles, compressing the image and putting the title="" and alt="' tags, we would be optimizing SEO On-Page a little bit more.

Internal links: Internal links within posts on our blog will not only increase page views but will also help us to be well ranked in search engines.

Blog's loading time: When you start with a blog either new or old, it's important to offer a user experience filled with a fast loading time. Search engines give higher priority to a faster blog than to a slow or saturated one.

Using Google Webmaster Tools: After making sure that your blog is 100% SEO, this amazing Google tool will provide you support with both fast indexing and broken links, HTML improvements, page errors and many other specific suggestions for your website.

Got any other ideas or thoughts about natural and positive techniques to improve the On Page SEO on a web page?

Express them in a comment!

Adding a Meta Description to Blogger

An important part of a good SEO is the implementation of meta tags, which are commonly located in the header of our website, that are being, in the same time, invisible to users visiting the site. Well, to be more succinct, these tags have only one purpose: to include information about the page such as author name, date, key word, description, title, among others.

However, here we will only mention one, which is the meta description in Blogger. This description will appear as a fragment in the search results and as a description when sharing on Google+, Facebook and other social networks. A clear and precise description increases the chances of getting more clicks or visits.
As we will work only on the Blogger platform, here I will leave a little guide to easily add a meta description.

Meta Description in Blogger

The first thing we will do is going to our Blogger dashboard and from there, go to Settings > Search preferences > Meta Tags > Description and click on Edit.

Then check the box "Yes" to enable search description. Finally, click the "Save Changes" button.

Adding Meta Description To individual Posts

Now we will focus on adding the meta description to individual pages. Simply edit the page or post, look for the Search Description setting, and there we enter the text and save by clicking the Done button.

And that's it. However it is best to test if it works and we will do so with the MetaChecker online tool, where we only have to introduce the url of a post or page, click Analyze and then it will show the results, including a complete analysis of keywords, on-page seo , meta tags, URLs, current server status and a rating bar that goes from Horror to Excellent.

If none of the meta descriptions appear (rarely fails), we can do the process manually, but it requires us to touch a bit of code. In this case, go to Template > Edit HTML and insert before <b:skin><![CDATA[ the following code:

<b:if cond='data:blog.metaDescription != &quot;&quot;'>
  <meta expr:content='data:blog.metaDescription' name='description'/>
</b:if>

Of course, we will use again the previously mentioned tool to ensure that the description is placed correctly and if all goes well, our blog would be ready to face a good SEO.