Internet Marketing Tips, Tools and Strategies

Did you know that using keywords in blog posts can increase your website/blog’s traffic? Here are a few tips to help you use keywords when blogging:

• Focus on one keyword per post. If you already have a list of keywords for your site, then this should be easy! Just pick one particular keyword and write a blog post based on it.
  
  
• Use the keyword early and often. Once you pick your own keyword or keyword phrase, be sure to use it right away – if you can manage it in the first sentence of the post (naturally of course). Also, use that keyword multiple times throughout the posts’ content – try a minimum of once per paragraph.


• Link the keyword to other blog posts and other sections of your website whenever possible.
  
  
• Use the keyword in your blog post title and url.


• Use keywords in tags and categories. Tags and categories are not only used for organizing content, but are also keywords themselves.


• Now, remember when I said put your keyword everywhere? Well, don't overdo it! Yes use your keyword in your blog title, url, and throughout the blog post, but be sure to not keyword stuff.

When writing a blog post, remember to use these keyword tips and you’ll increase your blog traffic in no time! Don’t have any targeted keywords? WSI can help you identify what keywords you should be targeting and how you can use them in your Online Marketing efforts.  

 

Are you struggling to come up with topics that are appropriate for your company’s blog? Running out of content that is not only interesting to read and write, but that is informative to your customer? Thankfully there are a few great, and simple to use, tools out there that can help you do some blog topic research. These blogging research tools will help you stay abreast of what the hot topics in your industry are and should help you find subjects that you can blog about.

Blogging Research Tools to get you started:

Google Alerts: This is a blog research tool you might already be using, as it is a popular method people use to get news. Google Alerts is a free email alert service from Google, it notifies you when there are new web pages or new stories about a certain topic you are interested in. Why not create a few Google Alerts using keywords appropriate for your industry? Then you can pull key news articles for your blog posts.

Feed Reader: Feeds are incredibly useful for blogging research. Subscribe to the RSS feed from a blog or website that you are interested in. You can receive new blog postings, podcasts, and online news as they are updated that give you current topics being discussed in your industry.

Google Trends: Once you have found a few topics you want to blog about, enter them in Google Trend to view popularity of topics over time. This will allow you to research the blog topic and see the search popularity of it before you start writing blog posts.

Keyword Research Tool: Google’s free keyword tool can help you research keywords relevant to your blogging topic. By using the right keywords you can drive the right traffic to your blog post.

Use these blogging research tools to find interesting, pertinent and current information to write your blog postings. Your readers will appreciate fresh and relevant content.  

Want to know what other research tools are available? Want to stay updated on hot blogging tips? WSI wants to keep you informed, sign-up for our free newsletter – Inside Edge to receive more blogging tips.

A website rich with unique content will perform better with Google and other search engine sites. The addition of carefully placed keywords will help improve your search engine exposure and relevancy of the content itself. In addition, using a content marketing strategy has become an extremely important piece to the search engine optimization puzzle.

When doing your keyword research take into consideration your product, service and location. What are the top words that identify with those 3 key areas. Put yourself into the shoes of your target audience. What would they search for if they were looking for the service, product or information that you have to offer? Create your list by brainstorming on paper or in Notepad. Create several categories and geo-modify those keywords if you are trying to attract local business. Take those keywords and put them in a keyword research and find some keywords that have search volume and acceptable levels of competition.

Ideally you want to start with 3-5 core keywords that you use consistently within all of your marketing efforts. This holds especially true if you are just getting started with a new site. Don’t try to target too many keywords to start unless you have the time and resources to go after more. You want to focus on these words for an extended period of time, typically 3-6 months to start depending on the competition level (some clients we are able to achieve #1 rankings for in 2 weeks, others take 12 months – it will all depend on competition levels for that keyword). Long term focus will help build keyword impact in the search engines. Each article should put the main focus on one keyword while implementing the others where appropriate.

Your keywords should be carefully placed within your title and throughout your document without being overused. Place them 2 or even 3 times within the first paragraph. After that once in each paragraph is adequate. Remember, you are writing for a human reader, not the search engines, this is an extremely delicate balance to strike and takes some skill to achieve.

Another way to embed them within your content is to tag (Alt Text) a photo used within your copy with your keywords. Use them with your social media posts and when sharing the related content.
One common mistake is to fill a paragraph with all of your keywords and then hyperlink them all to the same page within your site. This appears "spammy" and will not be looked at favorably by search engines. A general rule of thumb to utilize hyperlinks would be to use only one for every 120 words of content and evenly space them down the page.

Improving your keyword usage in your content marketing will benefit the way you are viewed by search engines such as Google and bring more traffic and viable customers to your website. To successfully implement a content marketing strategy all begins at the research phase. Make sure you take some time to do proper keyword research and are targeting keywords that have a reasonable amount of competition (no competition isn’t always a good thing). Your end goal is to have a “resource” site, with 100+ pages of content with keywords containing lots of great information for your readers in video, audio, pdf and the good old written word.