This post, by Bamidele Onibalusi, originally appeared on his YoungPrePro site.
I’m in the process of writing an ebook I plan to be releasing soon and one topic I touched that I think a whole article should be dedicated to is SEO. Most writers are concerned with just one thing, writing, and the reality is that focusing on that alone can only take them so far.
Writing isn’t just about writing an article that mesmerizes people; it is also about getting as much people to read your writing. In most cases, there is no point in writing an article if no one will read it, especially online.
I have been learning the basics of search engine optimization, how content get ranked in the search engines, and as a result I’ve been able to make some changes to my site that has resulted in significant growth in search engine traffic; at the moment, an average of 800 people visit YoungPrePro from the search engines every day, so I believe I have a few insights that can help you take your blog to the next level.
Some of these tips helped launch my blog in the search rankings, and some of these tips helped increase my traffic by over 200% in only a few months, so make sure you utilize them on your blog for better results.
What is SEO?
Most writers are only familiar with the process of writing articles and getting it published, and very few people really know what SEO is.
SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization, the process of optimizing your website in a way that is search engine friendly to publishing content that is search engine friendly and building quality offsite signals that helps the search engines know that your website deserves to be ranked well for a particular keyword.
In most cases, SEO isn’t just set-and-forget or something that you can do once and expect to be ranked well for every keywords. Of course, traffic to your articles will be consistent, but you have to keep optimizing for new keywords to get them ranked, and in some cases you have to keep optimizing even pages that are already ranking well for highly competitive keywords.
In a few words, SEO is the process of optimizing your online presence, optimizing your content to be search engine friendly and getting links, shares, votes and other signals to make it rank.
I know the process might be a little complicated right now, and that exactly is why I wrote this article. I’ll be giving you a basic breakdown into how SEO works, so that at the end of reading this post you can take necessary actions with your blog and begin to get results.
Why You Should Care about SEO
I keep hearing from people who hate marketing and who are not ready to learn the “jargons” of SEO. Most people write online, yet they believe that all they need to do is focus on what they’re good at, writing, and expect the results to come.
It just doesn’t work that way!
Traffic is the currency of the web, and no matter the quality of your content and your eloquence with words, you won’t survive online without traffic because not even an ant will read your content. And traffic, my friend, is what brings results; it is what brings sales, it is what leads to subscribers, it is what brings about clients and it is what leads to fame.
Search engines control a larger fraction of all the traffic online, and a great way to ensure you are getting as much traffic as you want is to learn how SEO works. Here are a few quick benefits of SEO.
- It helps you get discovered; by publishers, by readers, by fans, by fellow writers, by clients and by the media. Getting your message heard is important, and search engines help make this possible with little efforts and possibly no charge on your part.
- Targeted traffic; an added advantage to getting your content ranked well in the search engines is that you get targeted traffic. Most people only use the search engines when they want real solution to a problem, and this can be your leverage towards getting the results you want. Search engine visitors are people with real problems who desperately need a solution and are not just visitors from other sources like social media that just happen upon your website because the headline compelled them; these people weren’t interrupted by ads, nor were they forced to click over from a social media site due to the cleverness of your headline. They have a problem, they need a solution and they came to you just to get that through the search engines.
- Results that can be tracked; While it’s easy to go for an advertising campaign you think might be effective, you can’t really be sure of what works until you track your results. Search engine traffic is easy to track and optimize for even better results.
- Long term results; Unlike traffic from other sources, or online advertising campaigns, you only need to optimize a particular content once and reap the benefits for years to come. I haven’t done any conscious SEO for this blog for months now, and I’ve seen an almost 300% increase in search traffic.
Terms You Should Know
Read the rest of the post, which contains links to many more free online SEO and traffic-building resources, on Bamidele Onibalusi’s YoungPrePro.