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6 Steps to SEO Optimize Your Blog Posts
Lately, blogging has become one of the most profitable online businesses. In fact, some long-term bloggers admit that blogging earns them more than a million dollars each month, all while requiring very little of them.
However, the truth is that; not just any blog can earn you good money or attract high traffic. For your blog to reach its highest marketing potential, it should be more search engine friendly.
And this is where search engine optimization comes in.
Basic blog post optimization helps to ensure that your website gets high and regular traffic.
More so, it gives your blog posts an added advantage over other websites, such that you always beat the competition and remain on top.
But, just how exactly can you go about optimizing your blog posts to be search engine friendly?
Tips to SEO Optimize Your Blog
The following are six pro tips on how you can SEO optimize your websites and blog posts:
1. Do Proper Keyword Research
When writing different topics on your blog post, don’t just include any keywords; include thoroughly-researched keywords. Some blog post writers, especially beginners, usually guess the appropriate keywords then include these in their articles.
However, guessing which keywords your users will be interested in rarely makes blog posts search engine optimized. Therefore, rather than use any keywords, it is highly recommended that you do proper keyword research.
The good thing about thoroughly-researched keywords is that these are exactly what your blog post visitors and users will be looking for.
In other words, they are a guarantee based on sure search engine data and not mere guesses.
When you plan your content strategy using these well-researched keywords, you will be able to write interesting topics that most users will want to read.
More so, you will always have new topics and blog post ideas to write about.
2. Make Your Posts Easy to Read and Understand
It goes without saying that people prefer articles that are easy to read and understand. And this is also the same case with search engines. Most search engines usually rank articles that are user-friendly higher than those that aren’t.
Therefore, another way you can improve the search engine optimization of your blog is by making your posts readable and easy to understand.
You can achieve this by using short sentences, correct punctuation, small paragraphs, bulleted list and subheadings.
Also, you can use images between paragraphs, such that the text looks easy on the eyes.
3. Write a Catchy Blog Post Title
The most important part of any blog post is the title. A good title helps to increase the relevancy of your articles and blog posts to the search queries. In turn, this helps to improve your rankings on different search engines.
More so, a catchy blog post title captures the attention of internet users, such that they feel motivated to click on your articles when they see these in the search engine results. So, how can you make your blog post title catchy and interesting?
First, use your focus keyword in the blog post title. A focus keyword, also commonly referred to as a key-phrase, is the topmost search term that you wish your blog post or website to rank for most.
Usually, a focus keyword is obtained from the list of possible keywords and sits at the top of the pyramid.
Second, you can improve the search engine optimization of your blog post title by making it effective and click-worthy. There are different methods of writing click-worthy titles.
For instance, you can take advantage of the EMV (emotional marketing value) formula, which recommends using power words in blog post articles.
4. Add Videos and Images to the Blog Posts
When you look up most search engine rankings, you will realize that those blog posts and websites with more engaging content are ranked higher in the search results.
One effective way to increase your blog post content and make it more engaging is by including images and videos.
Compared with plain text, videos and images are considered much more engaging. Therefore, when writing any blog posts and articles, it would be a good idea to include images and videos between the paragraphs.
However, when you decide to add images and videos to your blog posts, you should ensure that you have the image/video copyrights.
Copying images and videos from other blog posts could cause you to be sued or lead you into legal troubles. In addition, make sure to optimize your multimedia content so that it ranks well in search engines. You should also use a social media site like Pinterest to get your post crawled fast in SERPs.
See Related: How to Improve Readability
5. Include a Meta Description
A meta description is an HTML tag that provides a short description or summary of your blog post article. Most search engines and crawlers use the information included in meta descriptions to rank the articles and posts.
Therefore, considering the importance of meta description in search engine optimization, it would be a good idea to include one in all of your blog posts.
A good meta description is that which clearly explains what your article is all about. Hence, when writing one, ensure that you provide a clear and easy-to-understand summary of your post.
Also, it is important that you include your focus keyword in the meta description, at least once. The maximum number of characters allowed in a meta description is 155.
When you exceed 155 characters, your meta description will most likely be truncated. Therefore, always ensure that your meta description remains within the 155 character limit and is easily understood.
6. Add Internal Links to Your Blog Posts
If you already have several articles in your blog post, it is high time you started including internal links in these. Internal links work by directing the readers to your older blog posts and articles.
When you include internal links into your blog posts, you create a contextual relationship between your older posts and the newer ones. In addition, internal links give you the opportunity to pass relevant information to the older posts.
Still, this doesn’t mean that you should always link new pages to older posts. You can also do vice versa and edit your older posts, adding internal links that will direct your readers to the new posts.
Such 2-way internal linking ensures that your page has good search engine optimization (SEO) and generates more traffic to the site.
Conclusion
Creating a blog post requires time and effort. Yet, when no one visits your site or reads your blog posts, all that effort will only go to waste.
You wouldn’t want that, right? Well, the above six tips can make yours an SEO-optimized blog and generate high traffic for you. Try these out and see how you get thousands, even millions of views to your blog.
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How to Keep PPC Advertising Costs Low
Pay Per Click, also commonly referred to as PPC, advertising can be a cost-effective way to drive targeted traffic to your website or landing page. It can be very profitable. That is, it can be highly cost-effective when it’s done right.
However, it can also be a very expensive proposition if you aren’t careful in your approach, attention, and expectations. The ultimate goal is to get the maximum possible ROI (return on investment). Here are a few small steps you can make that will help you keep your PPC advertising expenses from going through the virtual roof.
Limit Your Exposure to Only Likely Buyers
The bottom line is that you only want to pay for ads that are being displayed to likely buyers. It’s not enough, really, to get people to click through to your landing page or website.
You need them to buy once they get there or, at the very least, sign up for your newsletter so you can sell to them eventually. This means that the more you target your traffic to those “buy” keywords the better the odds are that you’ll get the kind of traffic that has a wallet in hand and is ready to buy. Research into keywords is important.
Try a Different Landing Page
You may want to try several different landing pages, as a matter of fact. The important thing is to test a wide range and combination of landing page and keyword combinations to see where the best matches happen to be. Sometimes, different keywords work better with some landing pages than others.
Do a little split testing and compare the results. The goal is to us the most effective keyword/landing page combinations you have at your disposal whenever possible while appealing to the widest, and most profitable, possible audience.
Zero in on Appropriate Keywords
If your goal is to make money through PPC marketing, some people are more interested in building a brand with this particular marketing effort, then it’s in your best interest to get more clicks. Google has a habit of penalizing sites or advertisers that get less than stellar click results with higher advertising rates.
You don’t have to move heaven and earth to find interesting and effective ways to save money from your PPC advertising methods. It’s just important to learn as much as you can about PPC success so that you can keep your costs down now and on future campaigns as well.
How To Find Affiliate Offers To Promote
So you’ve done your market research, and you’ve found some possibly profitable products or niches to promote online… now what?
I have received this question from many of my students who have gone through the first module of my “Pay Per Click Ecademy” course on market research.
Once you’ve found a profitable product or niche to promote, the next step is to source and find companies who are willing to offer affiliate programs for your products/niche. Here are a few ways to do this:
1. Joining Affiliate Networks
International
There are many affiliate networks available, but here are some of the top reputable affiliate networks around today:
- ClickBank – The ClickBank Marketplace has thousands of products, with the majority of them being digital products. It is a good place to find information type of products, and they have a good reputation with regards to paying their affiliates.
- Commission Junction – Commission Junction is similar to ClickBank and is quite a reputable company for affiliates.
- ShareASale – ShareASale has more physical products than digital ones. Give them a try if you are searching for physical items to sell.
For Australians
There are two fairly big affiliate networks for Australians, the first one is Commission Monster and the second one is ClixGalore, both are quite big and operate for Australians.
See Related: How to Format Text for SEO Optimization
2. Searching Affiliate Directories
There are some webmasters who have created online directories that provide search facilities for affiliate programs. AffiliateScout is one of them. All you need to do is go to AffiliateScout and either browse through the directories, or do a search for your particular keywords to find matching affiliate programs.
See Related: Buy Backlinks Smartly
3. Joining CPA Networks
CPA stands for Cost Per Acquisition or Cost Per Action, and is a payment model where advertisers pay publishers on a per lead basis. Large companies understand that there is a marketing cost to acquire a lead, so what they do is they pay their affiliates a certain amount per qualified lead that the affiliate brings to them.
This has huge potential to you as the affiliate/publisher, because you don’t have to sell anything in order to get paid. All you need to do is to convince targeted people to fill in a form as an expression of interest, and as soon as the form is filled, you get paid for the lead. Below are some great reputable CPA networks:
- AzoogleAds – AzoogleAds is a very popular CPA network amongst internet marketers. However, getting accepted requires you to go through a lot of paperwork, but is very rewarding once you get in.
- Market Leverage – Market Leverage has more financial offers so is good for anyone wanting to enter this market. They have a lot of other offers as well, so they are good to check out regardless. The other cool thing about Market Leverage is that if you are a super affiliate, and make more than $1,000 in weekly commissions, you can choose to be paid weekly, instead of monthly like most other affiliate networks.
- NeverBlueAds – NeverBlueAds has a lot of ringtone offers. It’s good for people who are trying to make money from giving away free ringtones.
There are a lot more CPA networks out there but I have not had time to go through and review them all. For your own interest, I have them listed below:
- RocketPocket
- CPA Empire
- Hydra Network
- Pepperjam Network
- CX Digital
- ClickBooth
There is no such thing as a best affiliate/CPA network, it really depends on what you are after, whether it’s support, or the amount of offers available etc. Each CPA network has its own unique competitive advantage, and each has hundreds to thousands of different offers. Go through this list and sign up for a few to see what you can find.
See Related: Steps to SEO Optimize Your Blog Posts
4. Searching on Search Engines
You can go to Google, or any other search engines such as Yahoo, MSN, or Bing etc. and do a search for your main keyword + affiliate program. For example, if you want to promote golf offers, you can search for golf + “affiliate program” (with the plus sign and quotation marks).
Also, if there are any affiliate programs related to your keyword available, the search engines will give you a list for you to check out.
See Related: All About Backlinks or Not?
Final Words On Affiliate Programs
Remember to check out the advertisers’ sales pages and history before signing up to their affiliate programs. Some landing pages and offers are really bad, they do not convert highly, or at all. Also, always remember to collect email addresses and a database, so you can sell back end related offers to them.
This is where the majority of the profits come from – the back end sales. If you keep the offers related to each other e.g. a person buying a product on how to play golf may want to buy some golf shoes and golf clubs etc. then the customer will thank you for it.
However, if you promote all different types of products, you will come across as someone who is just trying to make money out of them, rather than someone trying to be helpful.
So go and join some of these affiliate networks and see if there are offers related to your niche. This is Binh Down Under and I wish you all the best with your online business success.
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