Writing blog posts today is a bit different from what it was even 5 years ago. We are all learning as we go, so in this series I’ll be throwing out some ideas, along with links to resources that seem to make sense.
Tip 1: Getting Blog Traffic is Competitive and Requires a Strategy
The first thing we need to understand is that getting blog traffic is very competitive. Of course if you don’t care about traffic.. if you’re just writing because you want to think out loud, sort out ideas, work out your writing skills, etc., then you’re essentially playing a different game.
But if you want to make an impression, sell stuff, etc., you need a strategy aimed at getting traffic.
Tip 2: You Have to Start with Search
So if you DO care about traffic then you immediately have to start thinking about strategy. And that basically means understanding:
- What people are looking for. In other words, what they are SEARCHING for, and
- How Google decides to show certain content as opposed to other content.
Tip 3: Your Traffic Acquisition Strategy must focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
So it follows from our first two Tips that you have to spend some time figuring out how the Search Engines work. (I will use “Google” to mean “the search engines”, assuming they basically all use similar criteria for ranking content.)
In the business this is known as “Search Engine Optimization” or “SEO”. Understanding SEO means figuring out how Google makes ranking decisions: what criteria are used to place some pieces of content higher in the rankings than other pieces of content.
Tip 4: “Keywords” or “Search Terms” are Crucial
If you don’t already know the importance of “keywords” you soon will. That’s because keywords are used by Google (the search engines) as initial indicators of what your articles or posts are about.
It is critically important to understand that you should not be sloppy about your choice of keywords. You must be specific. Google can draw certain conclusions about your subject matter from the overall context of your article or post, but being specific about your subject matter is very important. For example, if you are writing about “pickleball paddles” you should use the term “pickleball paddles” as opposed to just “paddles”.
Or if you are writing about “restaurants in Waterloo”, but are actually focusing on restaurants serving Indian food, it is important to clearly spell out the term “restaurants that serve Indian food” or “Indian food restaurants” or any other terms that people use when searching for this type of restaurant.
Tip 5: Choose Keywords Where You Have a Good Chance of Ranking
Competition for Google rankings is fierce. And competitors who have been around for a long time, or who have an established presence in the market have a massive advantage over the newcomer.
But in every niche there are keywords that are less competitive but still get traffic. So the idea here is that it is better to get SOME traffic from what are called “long tail keywords”, than it is to get ZERO traffic from more competitive keywords.
As you will hopefully discover, there are keyword analysis tools that can tell you which search terms in your niche get traffic, how much traffic they get, and how difficult it is to rank for those terms.
We’ll discuss some of these analytical tools in future posts.