In this article we will look the various things you can do to your blog which will help improve search engine visibility this in turn should be able drive a good amount of traffic to it. We will assume that you’re using the WordPress blogging platform in this article.

Write keyword rich topics 

The biggest reason why blogs and blog posts are great for SEO and online visibility is the fact that every post that you write is a new web page and so every page offers a new opportunity to be ranked well for the keyword you’re targeting. Good content i.e. well written and optimized content will continue to be read, shared and liked by visitors to your blog resulting in hundreds if not thousands of visits. Here are a few ideas to generate good content for your blog:

• Turn questions your customers / clients may have into posts.
• You can search sites like LinkedIn, Yahoo answers and various forums that belong to your niche where questions are being asked, for blog post ideas.
• Take the keywords you want to rank well for and paste them into Google Adwords Keyword Planner. This will then show you how many people are searching for these words and suggest possible related phrases giving you more ideas. Also consider ‘keyword competition’, the higher the competition value the more difficult it is going to be to rank for it.

Creating titles with keywords 

Search engines like Google pay very close attention to your post’s title. So adding one or two keywords without sounding unnatural will do a great deal of good. Here are a few ideas:

• Make sure that the first few words are your main keyword. For instance if you’re targeting ‘Real estate agent’ (keyword) then something like “Real Estate agent: commission secrets revealed for beginners” will make an interesting yet keyword optimised title.
• Adding a number value to your blog post will help to engage visitors. For instance “3 questions you should ask yourself before applying for a car loan”.
• Use a colon between your main keyword and the remaining title like the example given above “Real Estate agent: commission secrets revealed for beginners”.

Add your keyword phrases early and very often

The title of your article is very critical to attracting readers and ranking well in search engines but the article’s body is important too. Ideally, you should add your keyword phrase to the first sentence of your post and then add it a few times in the body including once in the last paragraph. However, make sure that the article does not sound unnatural by simply stuffing it with keywords. Also, over optimising it by adding too many keywords (over 2%) may end up getting your content penalized by Google.

Use the all in one SEO pack

The ‘All in One SEO Pack’ is a free WordPress plug-in which can help optimize your blog posts. Once you have written your blog post you can check it with this plug-in to make sure it is properly optimised for the key phrase you are targeting. The plug-in also gives you the ability to add things like a meta descriptions. Learning how to use the plug-in is easy making optimising your blog very straight forward.

Conclusion

Whether you’re starting a blog to promote your main site or simply want to sell affiliate products your focus should be as much on good quality content as it is on SEO. Content which is helpful and well written will always do well and ensure that people keep coming back to your blog for more.