Here are five tricks for boosting traffic to your blog. The tricks include simple ways to use keywords to entice Google into sending folks to your posts. This article is intended for writers with basic to intermediate computer skills.
Make Friends with Google by Adding Keywords
Google is a very big and powerful company. If you are nice to Google, it will send Web surfers to your blog. Be nice by sprinkling a few Google-friendly search terms, known as keywords, around your blog.
Keywords are words that people commonly use to search for Web articles about a certain topic. This Loneliest Planet blog is about book marketing and self-promotion for writers, But are those the words -- the keywords -- other people most commonly use to search for those topics?
Four Ways to Find Keywords
1) Type your topic into Google's search box and it will show you a list of popular related terms that people are searching on.*
*Note: I swiped this tip from the good folks over at The Book Designer.
2) Use keywords being employed by popular sites and books on topics similar to yours. Here's how:
- Go to the keywords tool on a Web site called Abakus.
- Enter the url of the other popular site you whose keywords you want to copy.
*Notes: The site's instructions are in German -- don't panic! Just pop the url into the top box on the site. The results will be in English as in this example.
*This tip swiped from an excellent book called "Online Book Marketing" by Lorraine Phillips
3) Check your Web analytics tool to see which keywords people are already using to get to your site. The screenshot below shows common search terms people are using to find my comedy site called. "Chronic Single."
4) If you still have the energy, enter the keywords you've collected from the steps above into Google's Keyword Tool. This tool will list other popular words and phrases as well as how often people used them in searches. In general, you want use the most popular words.
A Word about Keywords for Fiction
My novel-in-progress is about a a chronically single guy who takes a
trip around the world looking for the woman of his dreams. The book also
includes some funny sex scenes. So, my book covers at least four
topics: world travel, dating, chronically single people, and erotica. I
could use those words to start my search for keywords.
How to Use Your New Keywords
- Use the word or words in your title, first paragraph, and labels of blog posts.
- If you're using Blogger, use the keywords in the description of your blog,
- If you're using Blogger, use the keywords in the description of your blog,
- Use the keywords in your social media profiles.
- Feel free to use more than one keyword; singular/plurals.
- Don’t over do it! Use the same word up to three times in article. (once is better than nothing.)
- Feel free to use more than one keyword; singular/plurals.
- Don’t over do it! Use the same word up to three times in article. (once is better than nothing.)
- If you pack your blog with keywords, not only will it read like it written by an idiot, you may piss off Google and hurt your blog traffic.
