Blog Seo – What’s it all about? We are going to suppose that your motive for blogging is to get your blog read  by as many people as possible and the first way to do that is to have a blog that people will want to read, and  then, to have a blog that people can find.

• How to Have a Blog That People Want to Read

The key to this is to concentrate on a specific subject, so that your blog is focused, and to be passionate about your subject.  It makes enormous sense to write about something you are interested in yourself.  You can be passionate about that, and you will likely know quite a lot about it already.  It will be easy to be knowledgeable and interesting on that subject.

• How to Have a Blog That People Can Find – Keywords

Plan your blog posts, so that each post is about a particular angle of the subject, and each post will then go to building up a resource of information about the whole thing. The subject title itself is called the keyword.  So if your blog is all about old furniture, then your primary keyword will be “antique furniture”.  Make this the title of your blog, and use the keyword whenever possible, including in the URL, the post titles and page links, and any advertising you do.

• Long Tailed Keywords

Build up the blog by writing posts about particular aspects of your keyword, such as collecting, sourcing, selling, restoring, maintaining, whatever. These secondary subject headings are called “long tailed keywords” (LTKs).  When your main subject is established, then start writing about as many relevant long tailed keywords as you can. This will reinforce the authority of your site. The more authoritative your site appears, the more search engine traffic will arrive.

• BLOG SEO

Having a site that is clearly organised by subject matter, and is tightly focused on the prime keyword, is an ESSENTIAL part of Blog SEO.  Good navigation is essential too, so provide a subject index, and organise it carefully. It is a good plan to internally link your posts to each other, and to the home page and keyword.  Links add [search engine] authority to keywords.

• Site Authority

It is also good strategy to go on and write posts that deal with another aspect of the same thing. For instance, you might write posts about Chippendale chairs, early American chairs, and unrestored chairs, this is likely to give you multiple results in the SERPs [search engine result pages] whenever a surfer looks for antique chairs.  You will have gained site authority, and extra chances of the reader clicking onto your site, because you will have more than one page showing up in the search. This is GOOD!  If you can get other “expert” sites to link to your site, that will help site authority too. Site authority begins with an organised body of factual and relevant information on a given subject.

• Post Layout

Set out your posts using the basic rules of good writing, and use plenty of white space, small paragraphs, clear headings, and at least one graphic – more detail here!  It is very important that your posts are easy to scan and read, because surfers tend to skim each page looking for points of interest, and will only start actually reading if their interest is caught. Big slabs of text are off-putting, and hard to read, especially if scrolling is required!

• Basic Blog SEO

To have a blog that people can find, you need to pay attention to fundamental Blog SEO, which consists in having an informative, interesting, and factual site that is properly laid out, is well indexed; and has lots of relevant internal and external page links.  There are thousands of articles written about “black hat” [questionable] ways to boost your Blog, but the above list will get you a reliable set of readers who are likely to bookmark your site as a good place to return for more information.  More importantly you will soon achieve “Google Trust Rank”, and your site will never be penalised by any of the constant  changes in search engine criteria. So there you go – you now know exactly How to Blog, and how to apply Blog SEO

• Keywords Defined

The logic with keywords is that Google will define your site by detecting keywords, then show it in the SERPs to other searchers using those keywords as references.  So if your post is all about SEO for blogs, then the prime keyword is SEO, and the first longtailed keyword is BLOG SEO. This is the basis of your keyword structure.  SEO is the head, BLOG SEO is the back-bone, and all the other related terms like,  KEYWORD, SEARCH, GOOGLE, and SURFER are “dem Bones that walk all around” as your site [keyword] skeleton. Keyword Coherence, therefore, is the art of making a strong skeleton [framework] of keywords; keywords that all point to each other and build each other up.

• Keyword Connections

Each article [post] features a particular keyword, and than talks about the long-tailed keywords that belong to it. The prime post keyword is related to the preceeding post prime keyword and strengthens it. So if your first post was about SEO, then the next post might be about GOOGLE, and the one after that about SURFERS – all related subjects – all building keyword strength. And all to do with SEO, Site Design, and Keyword Coherence.

• Keyword Linking

Keyword Coherence is further strengthened by linking.  To Maxinize your Site post about SEO, you would link the keyword GOOGLE to the next post (about Google), and in that post you would link your SEO keyword back to the previous post about SEO. This web of links that you create, each keyword linked back to it’s parent, and linked forward to it’s child [long-tail], is the internal component of “Keyword Juice” – it is the “internal linking”.  The other element is “external linking”, where you link to other related websites; and they in turn link back to you. This is the process known as “Back-Linking“‘

There’s a new tool you can use to home in on Long Tailed Keywords (LTK’s) it is called the Google Wonder Wheel. To find it, do a normal search, then click the Web+Show Options link to expand the option menu. Go down to the Standard view Menu, and click Wonder Wheel.

• Related Search Terms

The wonder wheel layout is like a kind of Mind Map of the “Related Search” terms for your primary search. Each spoke of the wheel gives a high ranked search term that is directly related.  We SEO types call these related terms Long Tailed Keywords (LTK’s).

• Google Adwords Keyword Tool

Click each of these spokes, and run any likely looking terms thru the Google Adwords Keyword Tool (with the language and country set  correctly). Note any high scoring searches. My basic SEO keyword has 6,100 searches globally pcm, but the  LTK’s I found had a combined value of 80,000 searches.  So, in a matter of minutes I had found 8 very promising LTK’s, all closely related to the prime KW, and all very prone to bring lots of search traffic.

• How to Find Long Tailed Keywords:

Using the Google Wonder Wheel is a fast and effective way to find LTK’s, if you combine it with the Adwords Keyword Tool. You really do kill several birds with one stone doing this. By combining these “related Search Terms” in your post you are making the work more authorative, you are providing coherent keyword use, and building traffic as well! This works even more effectively if you post separately using the LTK’s and cross link the posts.

(Double Listing)

• UPDATE:

Google has changed the rules and this info is now outdated – See the latest post here

• Getting 2 Birds with One Stone

I have a question from Mariam [Anti-aging Diets] wanting to know how to get listed twice in the top ten SERP’s.  This is when you have your page in the top 10 and another listed page offset directly under it. This double listing is very cool [also classed as getting 2 birds with one stone].

• Use Identical Keywords

We will assume for the moment that you selected your niche and long-tailed keywords [LTK's] carefully and already have one page in the top ten SERPs.  Then to repeat that, you have to optimize another page with the identical keywords and with an equal dose of linking authority, and  internal site linking. For another slant on this read Griz’s take on it here Make Money For Beginners

• Double  Listing – AKA, Double Indexing and Indented Listings

Double Listings are also known as Double Indexing and Indented Listings.
Double indexing can also refer to the situation where you have the same site listed twice, once as http://www.whatever  and again without the www in the URL. A Double Listing with the indented listing directly below is the ideal. Another good example of getting a double listing in Google SERPs is this post from Lissie [search on Site Build it Scam Review] which opened up the whole topic of Scam Reviewing of affiliate products.

• Good SEO

Google ranks each page on it’s authority for the keyword being searched.  This authority is made up of relevance, plus the authority and relevance of the incoming links to it. So to get onto that coveted top ten page you need to apply some SEO to your page and get your keyword coherence in place.  That means placing your keywords correctly; getting your internal links set up as in “Rocket Your Site to No 1 in Google“; and setting up some quality backlinks, as in  Grow Your Links Like an A-Lister.

Click to enlarge

• How to Monetize your Site

Finding out how to get listed twice in the top ten SERPs is a good step on the way to finding out how to Monetize your Site! Getting in the first five of the top ten will just about guarantee you get traffic, but doing it twice [double listing] will really guarantee it!

The recipe for ‘how to find Long Tailed Keywords’ is not hard to make up. You take the Google adWords tool, blend in your own site stats, and then mix with a splash of common sense.

• Choose your Niche Keyword

Find your Niche Keyword – either a term (word or phrase) that is relevant to what you do (for an established site), or one that nobody else is majoring on (for a new site). The base formula to select such a term is High Daily Searches +  Strong Advertiser Competition + Low SERP Competition.

• The Starting Point

Start by going to the https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordTool to find Long Tailed Keywords and entering your niche keyword. Pick relevant supporting keywords (LTK’s) with lots of Searches and good Ad competition, and then use these LTK’s liberally in your pages.

• UPDATE!

There is a new tool out now you can use for this.  See a post on the Google Wonder Wheel here

And an even newer post here

• Refine your Choices

As time goes on, keep track of what is happening in your own site statistics with search term popularity.  Terms that recur often are good, and deserve a page (post) of their own.  If a term shows up often, you can deduce that Google recognizes your site as authoritative for that term, and that users are actively searching for it, this combination gives you site synergy, so cash in!

• Tips for the Wise

Lock your keyword strategy in to your linking strategy (Rocket your site to No 1 on Google) to achieve site synergy. I call this formula Keyword Coherence – just a fancy term for ‘Getting all Your Ducks in a Row’!.

Homogenize your portfolio, by setting up new niches that complement and add to your existing main site (back-linking then earns more ‘juice’ !).

Don’t monetize pages for terms that have high traffic, but no (or very low) Ad competition. It is not worth the risk of getting ‘smart priced’, just milk the traffic with links that point to something that does make income.

Do remember to use your LTKs in the ‘tags’ of your posts too!

Use all of the above to discover how to find Long Tailed Keywords!

Just found this post by Tomaz where he explains that G has now put actual search numbers on the AdWord Keyword tool – Google Adwords Reveals Real Number of Searches Instead of The Green Bar

• Free Long Tailed Keyword Tool

This is total magic, cause it is free and you can just put in your language/country and get factual answers for which term has the greatest number of searches, plus there are keyword suggestions as well.

• Get Your Own

So surf on over to Google AdWords and see for yourself that you can get your own free Google keywords tool now!

Why not Host your Niche Sites for Free?

Okay, so you got this terrific “long tail keyword” and you want to make a niche site for it, but you are thinking twice about maybe it mightn’t work, and you want to put your toe in the water first before you spend too much, so what do you do?

Simple answer: try either of these………

• Sub-Domain

1. Just set up your trial on a sub-domain on your main site. You use the Long Tail Keyword as the domain name – like this www.long-tail-keyword.yoursite.com. Easy, right?, and you don’t have the aggro of trying to buy a domain name with that particular key phrase……….. or,

• Add-on Domain

2. Next trick is to look for an expired domain with some kind of connection to your key phrase and set up your new niche site using that domain as an add-on to your existing domain. You might get lucky and find an expired domain with both a key link AND some PR – you can buy PR3 or better expired names just for the effort of searching the current expired lists, and from $5.00

• Full Featured Domains

Of course, if your current host doesn’t offer add-ons and sub-domains as part of your deal, you might need to look around for a better domain host where you can host your niche sites for free.