Whether you write blog posts for pleasure or for clients (at Fi Darby Freelance we do both) learning how to blend great writing with effective Google SEO tools is a vital skill for any blogger, one which takes time and experience. The purpose of any blog, even one belonging to a digital nomad, should be to gain readership then encourage either further reading or clicks through to sales. With that in mind you need to make sure as a blogger that you, a) consider Google ranking, b) make sure you create readable and informative content. If you follow these maxims and post regular blog content, with an eye to Google ranking, you will find that, in time, your website (or the website of your clients) will move up the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Today’s blog post is aimed at bloggers who are new to Google SEO and keyword research, in order to prevent things getting too confusing, we have our three top answers to the question, ‘How can bloggers improve their website ranking?’
1. Be a committed blogger and make regular posts
You were probably expecting something more technical for our first Google SEO improvement point but upping the frequency of your blog posts can be one of your most simple and effective SEO tools. There are several reasons for this,
Increasing the number of pages on your website is important for Google ranking
More blog content means more opportunities to apply your keyword research
A good blogger can inspire higher Google ranking through longer website visits
Good blog content encourages inbound links, which are one of the important SEO tools
2. Do your keyword research
Keywords are the words used during internet searches and one of the most important tools for Google SEO. For example, if you were looking for a blog post about website ranking, you might choose the keywords ‘Google ranking’ or ‘website ranking’. You should select a few keywords but put your main focus on just one. The good news is that there are free Google SEO tools out there to help you with keyword research, a couple of examples would be KWFinder and Moz’s Keyword Explorer. These give you a set of metrics for each keyword related to a word or set of words of your choice. For a blogger the two most important metrics are,
Keyword monthly volume
This tells you how many times a keyword (remember these can be more than one word) has been used in internet searches. Using popular keywords can improve your website ranking. Look for keywords with high monthly volume.
Keyword difficulty
Keyword difficulty puts a numerical value on how difficult it is going to be for your site to compete with other sites using the same keyword. Look for keywords with lower values for keyword difficulty.
3. Use your SEO tools carefully and check your keyword density
Keyword density is not something the average blogger thinks about when they start their blog but as a blog following grows and opportunities to make money from it materialise, most bloggers’ thoughts turn to Google ranking. Keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword or phrase occurs within a piece of web content (e.g. a blog post). The jury is out on what exactly the blog post keyword density should be but if you aim for around 1% – 2% for each keyword you should achieve a blog of which the search engines controlling your website ranking approve, but your readers still want to read.
As with keyword research, there are free Google SEO tools out there that will tell you the keyword density of a piece of blog writing or a web page. These include, Small SEO Tools’ Keyword Density Checker and the Live Keyword Analysis tool.
It would be impossible for all bloggers to have top Google ranking and there are many more elements to Google’s algorithms and search engine optimisation methods (these are always changing). However by trying out the three SEO tools suggested above; being a committed blogger, using effective keyword research and checking keyword density, you will be taking steps towards being one of those bloggers you envy, whose posts always come up higher than yours in the Google ranking. One word of warning though, SEO tools are not everything and informative writing with consistently correct spelling and grammar is just as important, even for the most technically minded blogger.
Note – The five keywords I chose via keyword research for this blog post all had a keyword density of between 0.8% and 2%. See if you can work out which they were!
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