6 things every writer with a blog needs to know about attracting more traffic

Filed under Proactive Writer, Promote your book.

We all want visitors to our sites and the best source for new visitors is search engines. Here are a few tips to make your blog more visible to search engines such as Google.

Know your keywords:

The first step to being more visible to Google is to know your keywords. If you look on Google analytics this will give you stats for keywords from people’s searches that are bringing them to your site. You need to take control of this process and start to define your keywords. I suggest you make a list of 5 for 6 keywords or phrases that you think people who like your blog would type into a search engine.

Make sure the title of your post contains keywords:

Each time you write a blog post you are giving Google more stuff to add to its database. It is important that you make sure that you pick the important keywords not Google. One great way to do this is to make sure the title of your post contains your chosen keywords.

Make sure keywords are in the first paragraph:

It is also important that the first paragraph of your text also contains your keywords for that post. The more often you can use them, and the earlier they are in the paragraph, the more visible they will be to Google.

Make sure pictures have keywords:

You should always add ‘alternative text’ to your images. Google catalogues images based on this information. The inclusion of a keyword all helps Google juice flow in your direction.

Links from other people are what count:

All of what I have written so far is great for making your site more visible to Google, but what really counts are links from other sites to your blog. A Google link from a well respected (by Google) site will do wonders for your Google ranking.

Content is king:

The best way to get good strong links from other sites is to publish content to which they will want to link. The stronger your content, the more visitors you will attract, the more people will talk about your blog and the more visible you will become to Google.

Need more actionable advice? Get your free weekly list of killer resources, straight to your inbox every Friday:

  • http://theworldofchance.blogspot.com/ Chance

    No…

    This is bad advice, which serves no purpose than just to plug up the internet with crap. Would of expected more from you guys

  • http://isdisnormal.com Jillian

    Thank you for this advice, can’t imagine why you would receive such a scathing comment on common sense!

  • http://theworldofchance.blogspot.com/ Chance

    I left my comment, as I do feel disappointed. I came across your site a while back and had dog eared it, for your services appeal to me as a writer who, whilst writing short stories at the moment, is working on longer pieces.

    This article is poor, it is just above blog scraping. I could take anyone of those headings above, google it, and find the same drivel repeated on other blogs. I might also add the above is wrong to put so much emphasis on keywords, rather than content and links. Putting the stress on keywords, does nothing more than to clog the internet with useless offal.

    I also find it amusing that in the opening paragraph, mentions search engines, but then only refers to google. I also find it ironic, that an article aimed at writers, is not more content or readership orientated, but instead focus on keywords.

    All in all I find it a poor post. I am a real person, I am not a bot, nor a hit counter statistic. I hope the owners of this site, read my comment, because it has left me wondering what the quality of their service is like – which is why I am disappointed.

    • Gary Smailes

      Hi Chance,

      The aim of the post was to give writers with very little (if any) understanding of SEO an insight into the murky world of search engines. I could have written content is king, content is king, but we all know that already (don’t we). What I wanted this blog post to do was be an introduction to basics of improving a blog visibility to google. It is written very much with my readers in mind and I apologise to anyone expecting a more detailed post about SEO on a writing blog.

      blog scraping – Yes, certainly. I am no SEO expert but what I am able to do is collect together the best of the information from elsewhere and give it to my readers in a way that makes sense to them. If they then want to go the do the further research, then great.
      emphasis on keywords – I actually say that none of this matters if you are not getting links from other high profile sites. However, most casual bloggers have zero knowledge of using keywords, this is just an eye opener.
      only refers to google – Does any other search engine really matter? I could have talked about Bing and their approach to ranking but why bother when Google is the King of the Hill.
      Overall, I am sorry that you were left disappointed. If you need more detailed advice about SEO, such as development of real time ranking and the role of web page loading times on google’s logarithms just drop me a line.

  • http://www.dianeshipley.com Diane

    I found this useful, thanks Gary! I’m sure SEO experts have lots of other tricks, but it’s comforting to know there are small things writers can do to get their site a bit more traffic. Yes, great content is important, but not if no-one sees it. Like it or not, we’re in the age of “platform-building” if we want to get published, and I needed some hints for (cheap or free yet non-tacky) ways to start the process. I’d welcome other posts on promotion for authors/aspiring authors who let’s face it, often don’t feel like naturals at this stuff.

    • Gary Smailes

      Do you (or anyone else) want a super detailed SEO post?

      • http://www.dianeshipley.com Diane

        I’m more interested in the range of ways writers can use the internet (and other tools) to our advantage to be honest. Although I’d definitely read such a post, I do fear bamboozlement ;)

  • http://twitter.com/kaytheod Kay Theodoratus

    Nice list of things we all need to do … and I, at least, forget to do.

  • http://twitter.com/kaytheod Kay Theodoratus

    Nice list of things we all need to do … and I, at least, forget to do.