Back in August I started a three part post on SEO.  My goal with was to create a basic seo how to guide and learn enough about SEO to make sure I wasn’t hurting myself or my blog in anyway.  A lot of people get very confused when the try to understand or learn SEO.  Let’s face it SEO can be very complex. 

Honestly I didn’t think it would take me almost 2 months to finish this seo how to guide but I decided I didn’t feel right about posting part three until I did a some personal test cases.  Over the last month I focused on SEO keyword research and targeting keywords that I felt I could compete for.  One of the nice thing about waiting is you can see what has happened to my traffic as a result of these efforts.

Google Analytics tells a nice story here.

traffic  

My traffic doubled monthly because of my SEO efforts!

Here you see the last three months of traffic for The Money Cult.  Now I didn’t really start focusing on this blog or traffic till July.  In August I started teaching myself about SEO.  In September I started doing some keyword case studies and more SEO keyword research.  I started to target keywords that I felt I could compete with.  If you look at the search traffic you will see that I have 4x as much search traffic.

SEO Keyword Research

The final part of this basic SEO how to guide is to cover SEO keyword research.  I going to share my step by step approach to this.   Using free tools and following these steps I was able to most of the time land on page one or two within a couple days.

Step 1 – Open Google adwords – keyword tool.

Step 2 – Search for the root of blog post topic word

Step 3 – Filter by local search traffic

Step 4 – Add keywords that have between 1000-10,000 monthly searches and have high or average advertiser competition.

Step 5 – Take this list and then google these words.

Step 6 – Your looking at how many returns and who you would be competing against for your word list.  You will have to get a feel for what site you think you can compete with.  If you see any site like squidoo, ezine articles or sub domain blogs like wordpress or blogger on page one or two this is a good sign that no one is really targeting this.  I jump on these words.

Step 7 – Hopefully you have found some word to target now.  You want to write your post using the tips from Part 1 and 2.  Try to use the word or words as part of your title and url.  I also make sure to repeat the target word or words at least 3 time in the post.  Remember they say that header tags and bolding can have more weight with google.  So you might want to try to work them in to your post that way.

Step 8 – Meta Title, Description, Keywords – I use the All-In-One SEO plug-in and I make sure to reword the title so it is different but still included the target keywords.  I also make sure to include it again in the description and then of course list it in the keyword section.

Step 9 – Publish your post following your posting routine.  When I post I have some built in automatic and manual syndication that occurs.  When I post, I manually submit to Blogengage, I have auto feeds setup to post to facebook, twitter, squidoo and some others.

Then I sit back and wait and see what happens after a couple days. 

P.S. Remember if you now go and comment on blogs that support comment luv you will get backlinks to your article with your keyword in the the tile/url back this should help with your ranking.

Following the above steps I been able to compete pretty well over the last month following this approach.  I can generally find myself within the top 20 positions for the targeted keywords and often reach page one over time.

The nice thing about organic traffic is it seem to be consistent.  So once you reach page one or two you will see a couple hits each day for that word on that post.  So over time if you spend an extra 15 minutes to do this you should see your search and organic traffic grow.

Final Thought’s for my Basic SEO How To Guide

Many that teach this stuff teach it a level that is way to hard to understand for the average person.  I am pretty lucky I have always had pretty good success with learning and teaching myself very technically things.  Part of what I have been doing for years is taking very technical things and simplifying them so I can explain to others. 

Part 1 Learn SEO in 15 Minutes

Part 2 Learn SEO in 15 Minutes

I hope I was able to accomplish and share this here.  If you missed 1st two parts please take a few minutes read them.  Now look I do not claim to be an SEO expert as I am just learning this myself.  However I will say that I have taken all the basic important stuff that I feel everyone should know and put it in to this 3 part series which I call Learn SEO in 15 Minutes.  You could read all 3 posts in less then 15 minutes and you will learn the basic stuff that you should know if you have a blog.

Please let me know if you have any thing to add but I strongly suggest everyone take some try to target keywords and let me know how you make out.

Keywords

seo how to,seo keyword research

Related posts:

  1. Learn SEO in 15 Minutes Part 1
  2. Learn SEO in 15 Minutes Part 2
  3. What’s Your Blog Strategy Part 2
  4. Reader Pulse – Share Your Blog Advice
  5. What Your Blog Strategy? Part 1

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