I know I’m late in writing this post.
But I’m still going to finish up sharing what I learned at the Bloggy Conference that took place in Cincinnati, Ohio from September 27-29.
You can read part one of this mini-series of postsΒ here.
Next up I listened to Allison Kulage’s talk. Allison is from Bare Knuckle Marketing, and she’s an SEO ninja. She gave us some great SEO tips and tricks to make our sites work better for us.
Here are some of the main points I learned:
- Use and pay attention to keywords. These are the words people are typing into search engines, and if you have them in your posts and post titles, there’s a better chance that the search engines (like Google) will rank your site higher if you use the right keywords. For example, if you want people to find your recipe for homemade pumpkin spice bread, make sure to use those words in your post title as well as in your post. Use keywords for the images that are in your posts, too. Basically, using the right keywords will attract the right traffic to your blog.
- Link to other blogs. If you do this, they are more likely to link to your blog. Link love = Google Juice.
- Use short keyword phrases that are specific (not single words) in your posts.
- The right keywords can bring in a lot of traffic to your blog – think 50% or more.
- Get to know Google Analytics to find out what keywords are bringing in traffic to your blog. You may be getting traffic from words that you wouldn’t expect.
- Don’t over think the whole SEO thing.Β Write for your readers, but be mindful of SEO.
Allison made the subject of SEO less daunting, and I appreciate that. I don’t stress out or spend a lot of time thinking about SEO, but I am mindful of it. I know which keywords people are using to find my blog, and I always rename my images to make them more SEO-friendly. I also think that being on WordPress and using a great theme framework helps, too.
My next post will include the good stuff I gleaned from Nathan Engels of We Use Coupons. He shared some fabulous tips! And his tips are not just for deal-bloggers, they would be great to implement and execute on just about any blog.
Allison and Nathan are both amazing! So willing to share real knowledge and information. Great to have you at Bloggy Conference!
Thank you, Tiffany! And I am so thankful for their willingness to share the things that have made them successful in their businesses. π
Thank you for all you did to put together a great conference!
I need to use Google Analytics more often. I only look it over every other week or so. But it would be good to know which keywords are bringing people to my site. Thanks for sharing this information. I am really enjoying you sharing all you have learned.
I am looking forward to your next post.
Thanks, Shelly! There is so much information that we can get from Google Analytics, but it can be a bit intimidating. I’m learning more as I go, and I mainly use it for my site stats at the moment. π
I really appreciated this post Sandra! I haven’t read up on SEO yet because it sounded all complicated and it was all I could do to just get my blog set up and working correctly. But after reading your post, it sounds actually easy.
Hi Erin! There are whole books written on SEO, but I think doing the smart basics and writing great content will take us further than spending hours trying to master the ins and outs of SEO. π
Again, this is wonderful information!! I agree w/ Erin, I haven’t looked in to or read much about SEO because I was intimidated (YIKES). You have touched on how important it is to use key words, so at least we can be more mindful while we build out blogs as well. I am going to look into Google Analyticals as well. π