Instead, you will wait for Google to crawl and index your pages.

But why should you wait if you can speed up the process with a manual submission?

Well, you can let Google know that you have valuable content for your audience if you submit your website to Google.

Nonetheless, you’ll need to meet a few requirements before you submit a website to Google.

First, you’ll need access rights to access and edit your website.

Whereas backend access isn’t mandatory, you may need the access if your website needs a robot.txt file, lacks a sitemap, or lacks Bing Webmaster Tools and the Google Search Console.

We’ve found many other benefits besides speed that you may take advantage of when you submit your website to Google.

Read on to learn about the topic in detail.

The Basics of Submitting a Website to Google

Below are some things to understand about submitting websites to Google.

How Do You Get Listed on Google?

If you want to get traffic, you first have to be indexed.

To do so manually, first sign up to Google Console.

Then, create an XML sitemap with Yoast SEO.

Finally, submit the sitemap to Google Console to allow Google to read the changes you make to your site.

Is It Necessary To Submit a Website to Google?

Google usually finds and indexes valuable pages even if you don’t submit the pages.

Search engines use bots to crawl the web and find the sites to index.

If a link leads to a helpful site, Google indexes the site.

Nonetheless, the process takes a longer time.

So, manual submission of your website isn’t mandatory but essential to speed up your listing.

How Much Does It Cost To Register a Website With Google?

Domain name registration will cost you an annual fee of $15.

After submission, Google will take a few days or weeks to index your content based on your website type.

The process may take longer, but mostly not more than two weeks, if your website is large.

Does the Type of Website Matter When Submitting a Website to Google?

If you submit a new site, you must verify that you are the site’s owner.

The Difference Between Submitting an Entire Site and Submitting a Page

You can submit new pages even if you don’t own the website.

You don’t need to present an index request every time you publish a new page unless you want Google to recognize your content quickly.

On the other hand, website submission requires indexing.

How To Check if Google Has Already Crawled Your Site

You can check whether google has crawled your site in one of two straightforward ways.

Use the Site Query Operator

Open your browser and type ‘site: domain name.’

If google has crawled your site, you will see a list of pages.

If you don’t get any results, your site has issues.

You can find the underlying problem under the ‘error’ or ‘excluded’ report.

Typical errors include crawl anomaly, not found, and crawled but not indexed.

Check the Coverage Section on Google Search Console

The coverage section of the google search console provides a breakdown of:

• Valid indexed pages

• Blocked and excluded pages

• Errors encountered during the crawling process

In some cases, you may find that Google has crawled some pages and hasn’t crawled others.

In such a case, use the URL inspect tool to check if Google can crawl the specific pages.

You can also look for any issues that cause your site not to appear on the search results.

How Do I Submit My Site to Google?

Submission of a website to Google happens in the four simple and easy steps in the section below.

1. Register a Domain in Google Search Console

To register your site, open the Google Search Console and click ‘start now.’

Under the domain, insert your website’s URL.

Google will then provide a list of options to verify that you are the site’s owner.

You can use Google Analytics or the DNS record method for verification.

2. Verify Ownership of the Domain

Before you manage your sites via Google tools, you’ll have to complete the Google Search Console Verification process.

The process is simple, with different verification methods available.

You can opt for manual methods or WordPress plugins to verify the domain.

Manual methods include:

• HTML verification process

• Google Analytics

• HTML tags

• DNS verification

• Google tag manager

WordPress plugins that aid verification include SEO Press, Yeast SEO, Site Kit by Google, and Rank Math SEO.

3. Submit Your Sitemap URL to Google

You can submit your sitemap URL to google in one of two ways.

Ping Google To Submit

Google has a ping service that allows you to request a fresh crawl of your sitemap.

To use the service, type ‘http://www.google.com/ping?sitemap=<your sitemap URL>’ on Google.

You will then see the ‘sitemap notification received’ page.

You shouldn’t repeatedly submit or ping unchanged sitemaps.

Instead, only use ping service with new or updated sitemaps.

Submit in Google Search Console

Google search console provides insights about your site’s health and notifies you of sitemap errors in the future.

The steps to submit your sitemap URL are as follows:

• Log in to the Google Search Console

• Go to the right property

• On the left menu, click on “sitemaps”

• Paste in your sitemap URL and click ‘submit’

4. Step Further: Submit Individual URLS After the Domain

Often, you’ll only need to submit your website on two instances.

First, when you launch, and second when you move your website to a new domain.

One way to submit your URL is to add an XML sitemap to Google Search Console.

To do so, go to the sitemaps tab in the search console.

Then, enter your site’s XML sitemap extension to the ‘add a new sitemap’ box.

How Long Will it Take for Google to Index My Content?

Google takes between four days and six months to index your content.

The broad range depends on your website’s content and manual submission.

An indexable site is one that:

• Offers simplicity of use

• Includes a navigation bar that links to your site’s major and permanent content.

• Provides directions that allow Google bots to crawl your site correctly

• Offers valuable content to audiences

Besides an indexable site, you can still use the below Google visibility items to keep your wait to the minimum.

1. WordPress Dashboard

WordPress settings have a checkbox that reads ‘discourage search engine from indexing this site.’

When your site is under construction, you can check the box to ensure Google doesn’t crawl an incomplete site.

Yet, remember to uncheck the box after the setup is complete to enable Google to crawl your site.

Backlinks

Have many outside hyperlinks that point back to your website to get Google’s attention.

One way to get backlinks is to ensure your social media accounts link to your website.

You could also update your profile on manta and online Yellow pages.

On-Page SEO

You must have the correct page format to keep your site search engine friendly.

Proper SEO meta tags let Google use your meta tag information word for word.

As a result, you will be able to sculpt your search listing’s appearance on Google.

Google Analytics

Integrate Google Analytics within your website to notify the Google ecosystem of your existence.

Google Analytics also sends signals to Googe that show that you want to build your web presence.

With Google Analytics, you can log and analyze your website’s traffic.

How Do I Make My Website Push to Search Engines?

You may want Google to crawl and rank your site before competitor sites if you have time-sensitive content.

You can get your website to rank faster with Indexing API, known as Rank Math WordPress SEO.

The section below guides you to set up a WordPress Website to use Rank Math’s instant indexing feature for instant submissions.

First, download the plugin files, then proceed with the steps below.

1. Create an Indexing API Project

The procedure to create indexing API projects is as follows:

• First, go to the Google Platform and click the “create project” option.
• Alternatively, choose “new project” in the “select a project” drop-down from the pop-up that appears on your screen.
• Enter your project name, click “create,” then “next.”
• Click the “enable” option to allow your project to access the Instant Indexing API.

2. Create a Service Account

To create a service account, proceed in the steps below:

• Open the service accounts page and select the project you created in the step above.
• RankMath will take you to the next page, where you’ll need to click the “create service account” button.
• Enter a name and description for your new service account. Copy and save the service account ID for later use.
• Download the file with your API keys on the actions column, then select “manage keys.”
• The plugin will take you to another page where you can click “add key” and choose the “create new key” option.

Select the default JSON format and click “create.”

Your browser will automatically download the JSON file, which is an indicator that you successfully created the API key.

3. Add the Service Account as the Owner

You must verify your website with the Google Search Console to proceed with the step below, then:

• In Google Search Console Settings, go to “users and permissions.”
• Click on the three dots next to your account and click “add user.”
• Enter the service account ID in the email address field on the pop-up that appears.
• Provide owner-level permission and click on “add.”

4. Configure the Plugin

To configure the plugin:

• Upload the plugin you downloaded through your WordPress dashboard.
  Alternatively, go to the WordPress Admin panel and click “plugins,” then “add new.”
  Then, search and install the Instant Indexing Plugin.
• Go to the Instant Indexing under Rank Math.
  Then, upload or paste the contents to your JSON file under the Google API settings.
• Select the type of posts you want the Indexing API to probe Google to crawl your website soonest. Save your changes.
• Navigate to the console tab and enter a URL in the instant indexing section.
  Choose the action “Google: Publish/ Update URL.”
  Then, click on the “send to API” button.
  You should see a response about your instant indexing status after a few seconds.

Best Practices When Submitting a Website to Google

Search engines use complex formulas to determine the websites that match specific keyword searches.

Thus, your site must be search engine friendly to push your websites to search engines.

Here are some top ways to get a favorable score with a search engine.

Use Metadata

Description metadata allows you to let searchers have a glimpse of what to find on your page.

Include metadata that appeals to users and attracts people to read more of your content.

CMS sites always populate the data for you.

Publish Authoritative Content

Quality content is a top driver for search engine rankings.

So, tailor your content for your intended audience.

In addition, use specific keywords for every authoritative page on your website.

Update Your Content

The world constantly changes, and so do data and information.

As a result, you need to update some things that are relevant today to maintain relevance in the future.

So, update your content wherever new or modified valuable information streams in.

Our favorite tools to make this step hassle-free are Surfer SEO or MarketMuse for content optimizations, and any type of AI writing software for content updates.

Wrapping Up

Now you understand how and why you should submit your site to Google.

So, don’t let the benefits associated with manual submissions slip out of your hands.

Do you have any questions?

Comment below, and we’ll help you out.

Congrats! But now comes the hard part.

Your writing is out there for the world to see, but you want to gain more readers.

How do you increase website traffic in 2022?

Good question. That’s where this article comes into play.

We’ll break down the steps you can take to make your website excel.

Be mindful that you don’t have to try everything.

This guide is to help you out but what you decide to do depends on your content and brand.

Don’t be afraid to try new stuff, but consider one piece of advice that stands out and make that your priority.

The Basics of Website Traffic

Let’s establish what website traffic is exactly and how it can help you as a business owner.

What Is Website Traffic?

Website traffic refers to the users who visit your website.

Website traffic measures business effectiveness and how well the pages attract an audience.

Seeing how many people go in and out daily determines how popular and visible the website is online.

You can also see how long users stay, who purchases your product, and how much it costs to bring in more visitors to your website.

Traffic refers to all of the pages of your website, not just the homepage.    

Which Types of Websites Get the Most Traffic?

The top five U.S. industries that get the most traffic include

• Internet and telecom
• Arts and entertainment
• News and media
• Shopping
• Adult entertainment

Internet and telecom take a whopping 95% of the traffic share.

Google, Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo, and Amazon own about 32% of the total U.S. traffic market.  

How To Increase Website Traffic

Increasing website traffic has become easier in the 21st century with various platforms.

Once your website is functioning, you need to increase the views.

The process can be challenging.

But you don’t need to have a rigorous background in marketing to promote your blog.

After reading this article, you can check out this video and get more visitors like a pro!

Are you ready for more page views and success? Let’s get started!

1. Produce Great Content

Firstly and arguably most important is your content.

Good quality, comprehensive, and detailed articles will make your website reputable, right?

Your website should be helpful to users and focus on specific topics.

Consider the pillar articles (aka flagship content or cornerstone articles).

These keyword-packed blogs will provide thorough info, snagging the interest of users.

You could write a how-to guide, a tutorial, a comparison, an opinion, or a listicle article.

Remember to go in-depth and focus on one topic only.

You don’t have to worry about these articles expiring or becoming less trendy.

The information should always be useful regardless of how much time passes.    

Infographics

Users view infographics more, liking and sharing them on social media.

If you have a graphic designer on the team, then all the better.

Many people appreciate pictures more.

So, you can communicate any idea or concept, like data, research, or stats in a more user-friendly way.

The only downside is that infographics are expensive.

That said, they’re excellent at making content shareable, and guess what?

Visuals are another spiffy way to increase blog traffic.

2. Perform Keyword Research

Big data is when you, or a team member, collect and analyze large sets of data.

In this process, you can uncover new and interesting findings that benefit you and the users.

You can build better connections by including target keywords in the content.

Anyone can research what keywords do well and others that fall off the face of the planet.

You might need some programming skills or a budget for a developer.

Confirming you do SEO (search engine optimization) right is intimidating.

But with a little bit more effort, you can gain more credibility.

3. Target Long-Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords are what they sound like: longer keyword phrases.

Most of the time, customers resort to long-tail keywords when they’re closer to purchasing.

For example, someone might type “sofa” when they browse furniture online.

Then, a few clicks later, they type something more specific.

Compare this keyword to the last: “brown leather sofa with loveseat.”

While a bit of a tongue twister, long-tail keywords can be super beneficial for your website.

They have a lower search volume than the shorter keywords.

But, once you gauge long-tail keywords, you establish better communication.

You draw in customers who are more focused, committed, and want your services.

In other words, you spend less and make more, which is what everyone wants.

4. Quality Over Quantity

Including photos in your content makes your website more appealing.

You could also smack the keywords into the alt image, which boosts the overall SEO.

You can’t grab any image unless you want to violate copyright laws.

Choose royalty-free pictures from safe websites.

Or, snap a few photos and upload them.

Make your website memorable and unique so you stand out from competitors.

Provide useful, specific, accurate, and well-thought-out answers.

If you publish more, you can get more traffic.

Research, post regularly, but care about your content.  

5. Get User Intent Correct

Understand your users and build meaningful relationships.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• What are they looking for in the content they consume?
• Who are they? What’s their age range? Job? Education? Level of expertise?
• What problems do they need to solve?

Find answers to these questions.

Provide appropriate subjects that relate to the people who read and interact with your blog.  

6. Create a Tool or Content

Offering something that your visitors can use is a great way to obtain more traffic.

Say you have a free, downloadable template available on your website.

Creating a tool or content for marketers or creators to access will maximize returns.

Of course, nothing is free in life, but you can get their contact info in exchange.

Therefore, you can find new leads, increase blog traffic, and promote your content and tools.

Relevant groups related to your industry will appreciate the collaboration.

You helped make their lives easier, after all!

7. Optimize Content With SEO

Highlight terms that people search on Google or Bing.

Find unique content ideas.

Don’t be afraid to peek at what competitors do.

Create related articles to drive constant traffic to your website.

Plenty of keyword research tools are out there to access.

All you have to do is enter the word or website address.

Then, you get new keyword ideas that will outdo other similar websites.

Ensure SEO Best Practices

Write better titles that include specific keywords.

Sometimes, the titles are more important than the content.

Potential readers look at titles first to see whether or not they want to read more.

Think of magazine covers.

Make the titles eye-catching, filled with solutions or interesting tidbits.

By doing so, more readers will click on your articles.

Perform On-Page SEO

Learn more about the specific words and sentences users type into search engines.

If you guess, your content most likely won’t score high.

Aka, you won’t get the traffic you want because the competition is too high or no one’s looking for that specific topic.

Basic On-Page SEO Tips

SEO allows you to bring countless new visitors and customers to your website.

The best part is you get to establish and decide everything.

We won’t lie; SEO is a lengthy process.

You must optimize both behind-the-scenes and live components of your blog.

But, once you get a better idea, you’ll see higher rankings in searches and an increase in traffic.

SEO revolves around your content, telling Google more about your website.

If you take the time to utilize good on-page SEO practices, the customers will see and appreciate it.

Choose relevant keywords and topics to produce high-quality pages.

Use an SEO Plugin

Here’s a bonus pro tip for you!

Use an SEO plugin like Rank Math or Yoast to make SEO plugins super simple.

As we established, SEO is one of the best practices you can use to make your website more search engine friendly.

You don’t need an expert, and you can find plenty of resources at your disposal.

The above websites have advice, step-by-step tutorials, and a comprehensive design.

The tools will optimize your website and provide the features you need to succeed.

8. On-Page SEO

Implementing these SEO tricks might seem like a no-brainer.

Of course, you’ll know that you need a homepage.

Still, note each page in the navigation menu with primary and secondary labels.

Then, those who didn’t create the site know what you intend with each tab.  

Meta Description

A meta description is a short blurb about the article that appears under the blog.

It’s not an official ranking factor in search engines.

Yet, a meta description influences if people will click on your page or choose to keep scrolling.

Copy the meta description, pasting it on your social media content.

You encourage clicks via those sites.

Keep the description under 160 characters and use the entire keyword.

Write one or two strong sentences to convince users that your blog is worth checking out!

Keyword in Title

As you probably figured out by now, keywords are super important in SEO to generate more traffic.

A plus is that keywords are easy to incorporate into a short title.

Make sure that every page has a keyword strategy.

Then, choose one key phrase and incorporate it into the title, headline, and within your blog (sound as natural as possible!).

Google will better understand what the page is about.

Then, the search engine will recommend it to people browsing for similar content.

One Keyword Only Per Article or Page

Keywords help tell visitors what they can find on pages.

Focus on that specific phrase or a couple of other corresponding words.

Don’t overstuff your blogs with keywords. If you do, your blog seems like a scam, second-rate, and unnatural.

Search engines monitor and penalize content that goes overboard with keywords.

So, make your blogs relevant and, most importantly, you.    

9. Use a TF-IDF Tool to Optimize Content

Tools like Surfer SEO or MarketMuse optimize words and sentence structures in your blogs.

Thus, your website ranks higher.

Hopefully, you’re not too confused.

In simplified terms, a TF-IDF tool is the algorithm that acts as the base for every search engine.

It determines what content is most relevant according to the user’s search.

TF-IDF directly influences the website ranking.

You can use this tool to find related terms about the topic you choose to tackle.

Approach content with SEO in mind so you don’t miss out on key terms that could ultimately get you more traffic.  

10. Perform an SEO Audit

An SEO audit helps you sort through old pages you need to merge, delete, or rewrite.

Regularly update old content and prioritize what you want your audience to see.

Organizing the web pages helps give you a basic layout of your site.

Then, you and your potential customers can navigate the blogs without hassle.    

11. Use Schema Markup

What is schema? Schema refers to structured data vocab.

Think about it this way.

Schema helps search engines understand the info on your website.

Therefore, when people look for results, Google, Bing, or Yahoo present them with related content.

Using schema will assist in determining the meaning and relationship of your website.

Schema is another SEO method that organizes data around people, places, and things online.

Schema coordinates with search engines to provide users with better results.

To summarize: schema elaborates what your site content means vs. what users find on your website.

12. Add Internal Links

External or outbound linking is when you use another company’s product or service.

The business you mention may notice your post and link back to you.

Besides, readers like it when you provide resources.

However, it’s harder to ask third-party websites for permission to use their links.

On the flip side, internal links are strictly to promote your website.

You can use a tool like Link Whisper to add internal links within your blog.

Link to existing posts, building context, and a strong relationship between different articles.

Internal linking helps with ranking and increasing page views.

You also keep users around longer instead of bouncing from page to page.

13. Ensure Fast Load Times

Nobody likes waiting for pages to load.

You want to make sure your users are happy with how quickly your blog functions.

If your website takes its dandy time to load, users will leave out of boredom or frustration.

Your website speed is one of the biggest factors in ranking.

Keep Users Happy With Fast Load Times

Optimize the WordPress performance and images, and clear cache.

You ensure your blog loads in a reasonable time.

That way, you avoid unnecessary weight on your website that makes the pages lag.

Meet Core Web Vitals

Here’s a brief history.

Google initiated web vitals to guide quality signals.

Web vitals are essential to delivering great user experiences on the web.

You can apply core web vitals to all your web pages.

Web vitals play a direct role in loading, interacting, and visual stability.

You can measure core web vitals with field tools as the site owner.

Make sure the three previous requirements meet recommended target levels.

In other words, loading, interacting, and stability all need to reach the 75th percentile.

Adjust your website as necessary if one of these features is lacking.

14. Build Backlinks

So we talked about internal linking, but what are backlinks?

Backlinks are incoming links to your content from external websites.

These are just as influential in search engine rankings as internal links.

However, finding reputable backlinks from blogs and websites can be hard for everyone.

Talk to other influencers and bloggers.

Tell them about the content you want to link.

Or, ask if they want to write guest posts on your website.

On the other hand, you can interview them and encourage fans to check out the final post on your blog.

You can add the link to your website and other social media profiles after collaborating with others.

If you want an easy way to get respectable backlinks, take this approach.

Backlink Exchanges

Countless businesses try to increase blog traffic.

So, you must link to sites in your posts that offer related and interesting content.

These additional resources should mutually benefit you and the other blogger.

Once established, you’ll get more views.

Finding the right partner means you can reap plentiful rewards.   

Guest Posting

Guest contributors can write for your blog.

They add more content and carve new paths for the future.

Another plus is you won’t have to work so hard coming up with ideas.

Then, both of you can share the completed article on social media.

Sometimes, other bloggers might ask you to write for them.

Writing guest posts and contributing to their website helps build an audience.

You gather readers who want more of your content.

15. Maintain Social Media

In the 21st century, social media plays a crucial role in promoting your website.

Share new blogs on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.

You’ll create more networks while sharing your great content.

Social media acts as one of the top traffic sources.

Posting on websites other than your own reaches more potential consumers.

Add share buttons on your blog to other social media platforms.

Linking to your Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook accounts helps readers spread the word.

Interact with your social media, retweeting and sharing past and present content.

Don’t be afraid to recycle previous content.

Sometimes, people don’t have a chance to see the blogs when you first post them.

Of course, make sure the blogs are still relevant and not regarding an outdated topic.

Create Social Media Profiles (If You Don’t Have One)

We, as humans, appreciate social media because it taps into other experiences.

It influences our own decisions. So, list your social outlets on your website.

Talk about your blog in Tweets and emails, and tap into the advantages of social media.

You can interact with readers by including a feedback form at the end of a post.

Or, advocate for users to leave a comment. Approach users to collect testimonials.

Ask them to rate your articles and leave reviews.

Share your social media stats, like how many shares or email subscribers you have, to increase reputability.

Set up alerts on social media to monitor keywords that people use in conversations, and answer questions posed by your readers.

Link to your website article to promote your brand name.

Set Up and Optimize a Google Business Profile

Google is the leading search engine.

So it’s safe to say that your target audience browses there for products and services your company sells.

A Google business profile is crucial especially if you’re a small business owner to increase blog traffic.

Claiming a business profile helps you find potential customers.

You also increase your credibility and legitimacy.

You can elaborate on your business, such as your location and contact information.

Leave past reviews and anything else you want to share with the world.  

Use Hashtags

Hashtags are super helpful to gain attraction and get more customers to your website.

Once you post content, use relevant hashtags that searches will pick up.

Then, your blog and website appear when users browse for related topics.

Tag influencers who might be interested in your content.

Hashtags entice and encourage readers to click.

Engage With Your Audience

Follow a clear theme and establish a consistent niche.

After you figure out what to pursue, you can decide who you want your blog to reach.

Think about what your target audience wants to read and what messages you want to convey.

Focus on one interest rather than confusing them with multiple.

Interact by replying, reposting, or tagging them to build a healthy community.  

16. Leverage Email Marketing

When growing your blog, you don’t just want to think about new visitors.

You must maintain the relationships with existing customers and encourage them to return.

With email marketing, you can coerce them to subscribe to your blog and follow other social media.

Building an email list helps expand your reach.

You have peace of mind that the messages go directly into their personal or business inbox.

Email marketing is cost-efficient and effective for promoting your website.

Send out emails regularly, and you’ll increase blog traffic.  

Build an Email List

A mailing list allows you to send out brand-new content.

However, consider only sharing the first paragraph from several of your recent posts.

A sample, if you will.

Then, include the link to continue reading on your site.

Not everyone reads your blogs weekly (as much as you want that to happen).

So, you have a chance to get them invested and subscribe.

Send Newsletters to Your List

When sending out newsletters, make the content easy to read.

Email your signature with a brief bio from your online profile.

Readers should be able to subscribe easily.

If they leave a comment, respond so they know you’re equally engaged.

Clarify the topic in the subject line and body.

Insert a link or button so subscribers can click to read more.

Allow mobile and desktop access so readers can navigate regardless of their device.

You could personalize the emails further and include their names at the top.

Make the newsletter visually appealing and use templates if you’re unsure.

The most important thing is to have fun with your blog!

17. Run an Advertising Campaign

Advertising through paid search, social media, and display ads effectively increases website traffic.

That said, there are a few downsides.

Users can block display ads, thus lowering the average cost per click.

Consider your budget and goals before investing in advertising.

But you can choose from several methods and figure out what works best for your business.

PPC Campaign

PPC, or pay per click, ads are beneficial to see how audiences behave with various keywords.

You can start with one campaign and experiment with a few different ad groups.

Test multiple keywords.

Maybe you’ll discover that one didn’t increase website traffic while another encouraged clicks and investment.

Google Ads

Google Ads promotes your website via a sponsorship with specific posts depending on where your readers spend the most time.

You have to invest some money, but you boost your website traffic while gaining returns.

Google Maps Advertising

Google Maps is an advantageous way to attract nearby customers.

When you run a local business, advertising via Google Maps helps them find your location.

All you have to do is enable location extensions from your account.

You can set up or update your business profile (that we previously mentioned).

Then you can use location targeting and optimize keywords.

In the end, you get more details about the people who use your blog and business.  

18. Other Display Networks

You can opt for different advertising options instead of what we listed above.

Your choice ultimately depends on your brand, your website, and what you write about daily or weekly.

Look at the following companies to see if any spark your interest.

Outbrain

Outbrain advertises brands on media sites, helping you grow your customer base with customized recommendations.

Their services increase your visibility, connecting brands and agencies to consumers.

More importantly, their content is engaging.

Some of the most recognized media companies use Outbrain.

Many consumers appreciate engagement compared to fancy displays.

You can promote, educate, and influence customers with Outbrain.

Their services guide you to the performance goals you want to reach and increase monetization.  

Taboola

Taboola reaches customers on trusted websites with genuine and effective ads.

You can obtain new audiences on a more massive scale.

Taboola also uses behavior data to track users and create formats tailored to them.

You can meet your marketing goals and promote awareness of your blog with Taboola.

You’ll get new users and encourage them to participate online.  

Amazon Ads

Amazon Ads allows the world to see your brand.

You can reach audiences while they browse the stores, read e-books, listen to music, and watch shows.

Amazon offers advertising services away from the main website as well.

You can customize your brand shopping experience and create interactive ways to speak with customers.

Amazon Ads provides useful tools to plan, manage, and measure your website.

The services optimize digital marketing strategies and provide content with modernized resources.

You can reach readers, drive sales, and run campaigns to grow your business.  

19. Retargeting

Retargeting is a form of online advertising.

However, retargeting focuses on the people who have already visited your website.

Perhaps you have their contact info, or they browsed your blog and store before.

Retargeting generates awareness and completes the buyer’s journey.

In other words, they won’t leave without buying or supporting your website in some way.

You have the chance to introduce new products or posts that could snag their attention.

20. Outreach To Others In Your Industry

You can’t do everything by yourself!

Building connections and relationships with people are crucial when you start your blog.

You want to reach an audience and make online friendships that benefit everyone.

Take a look below to learn how you can engage with more people to help reach the goals for your blog.

You dedicated a lot of work to make it the best it can be!

Influencer Outreach

Finding and engaging with other influencers helps promote your blog.

Your traffic will boost, and that’s what we want!

Although, influencers already get hundreds if not thousands of messages a day.

Most often, they’ll disregard your message if you’re just starting a blog.

They’ll assume you don’t have anything to offer in return.

So how do you get their attention?

Talk with them via social media.

Share your opinion on their content by leaving a few comments here and there.

These interactions add value.

The influencer will appreciate your efforts and honesty and remember you.

Then, you can establish a relationship, giving and getting advice from an online veteran.

Press Releases

Submitting press releases helps promote your business to potential clients.

But, you don’t want to just smack them onto a website and see what happens.

Push the release and send the article to influential websites.

Then, related industries publish the article to reach audiences.

You’ll see a spike in new customers and increased blog traffic.

Attend Industry Events

Face-to-face interactions with people in the same business are still important. (Even though we accomplish so much online nowadays).

Establishing these connections generates new business and confirms you stay current with trends.

Building meaningful relationships helps your company grow and establish more trust.

You have a chance to discuss your common interests and goals.

You can share ideas and become more motivated with additional information.

You’ll learn more from presenting speakers and get feedback.

You have a chance to connect with fellow influencers with similar target audiences.

Remember you’re entering a very competitive field.

Find sponsorships or others you can work with again.

These conventions are highly valuable for future years.  

Speak at Relevant Webinars

Q&A websites are the biggest online communities on the internet.

You can answer questions and interact with others.

Your replies will remain online for as long as the answer remains accurate.

You can get a regular source of traffic by writing detailed answers.

Host webinars to prove your knowledge to an eager following.

Link to your posts if they fit the context.

Become Well-Known in Forums

Similar to the previous tip, you can participate in online communities.

Websites like Reddit are a great source of traffic.

You’ll find interested users who are passionate about specific topics.

You can participate in smaller communities on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube groups.

Spend time building your reputation instead of just posting links to your articles.

Answer questions, join discussions, and share your website when appropriate.

Don’t just spam your blogs and leave because no one will appreciate that.

Besides, Google may block you, so it’s a lose-lose.  

21. Track Your Analytics

Once you start creating content and promoting it, you need to track how well each piece does.

How do you know which keywords are successful?

Track Using Google Analytics

Google Analytics discovers where your users come from.

You can see what they do when they browse your website.

You can’t determine what step to take next without this feature.

Tracking visitors and reporting their behavior, like engagement and activity, allows you to determine the most successful aspects of your blog.

Then, you can feel confident in what works and what doesn’t, making adjustments as you go.  

Track Using Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free tool that Google provides for website owners.

This tool helps you see how your website does amongst users.

Google Search Console also monitors competitors and their website traffic.

You can see who ranks higher than you and why.

Pivot If Things Aren’t Working

If the strategy you’re using doesn’t meet your objectives or if the metrics do not display what you set out in the beginning, change the strategy.

You don’t need to stall your blog with a strategy that doesn’t provide good results.

Different blogs require different strategies.

What Doesn’t Work

Sometimes, things don’t work out. But, you shouldn’t get discouraged.

Try another solution.

Make adjustments and experiment with other options available to you as a blogger.

Look at the next sections to see what you should avoid when trying to increase blog traffic.

1. Directories

Here’s a quick background on directories.

Years ago, not many people had websites.

They were relatively uncommon and didn’t garner much profit, unlike today.

But, as the internet progressed, more websites began to pop up.

People couldn’t remember the site names, so a group of guys decided to create a web directory.

They made money by selling advertising space and boosting results in exchange for a fee.

Directories brought better ratings. However, now they don’t make as big of an impact on rankings.

The downside to directories in the modern age is they tend to have a lot of spam since no one manages them.

Google penalizes people who use web directories. Overall, directories aren’t efficient and can be compromising for a beginning blogger.

2. Link Wheels

What are link wheels anyway?

Visualize this: you have your main web page in the middle.

The backlinks from other websites form around it, like a wheel.

Link wheels are problematic to say the very least.

Most often, website owners don’t have enough time or resources to create high-quality backlinks.

Link wheels can’t improve SEO rankings noticeably.

They’re also expensive and take a lot of time to perfect.

Even then, you have to dedicate energy to constantly maintaining link wheels.

In short, you have to plan and execute link wheels correctly.

There are benefits to link wheels, but the cons outweigh the pros.

The return isn’t worth the increased workload.

You’re stuck with long-term maintenance like software updates and troubleshooting errors.

Besides, you struggle to create unique content.

3. Blog Comment Spam

Blog comment spam is difficult to define.

You know it when you see it.

Whenever someone posts a comment that doesn’t ask a question or contribute anything relevant to the article, you know it’s spam.

But why does spam happen? Who’s behind these obnoxious comments?

Unfortunately, the link to the blog most likely contributes.

When posting, you can choose to leave your website URL to attract readers.

As with anything on the internet, your blog accumulates friends and foes.

Those who compliment your blog and others who use it as an opportunity to spam.

You can avoid spam by disabling comments.

But, a blog is supposed to be a conversation.

Limiting your readers’ abilities to interact makes your post boring.

You might not increase your website traffic if users feel unwelcome.

4. Instant Traffic Generators

Instant traffic generators sound too good to be true.

To be perfectly frank, they are.

These generators advertise themselves as able to bring thousands to your site.

But, they will provide more harm than help, ultimately wasting your time and money.

They aren’t safe or effective. Plus, you’re taking the easy way out.

Instant traffic generators aren’t as simple as pressing a button, and suddenly you’re a hugely popular blogger.

Google picks up on fake traffic and will ultimately ban your website.

Choose the smart and safe option.

Work to gain authority instead of faking traffic just for your success and ego.

Wrapping Up

Here’s the bottom line: you can take several steps to increase blog traffic in 2022.

Experienced influencers choose a few of these options, implementing them to garner attention from readers.

After reading this article, you hopefully better understand how you can improve your website and career.

Increasing your blog traffic is something anyone can do.

While you have to put in a bit more work at first, you’ll ultimately be successful in creating a website that excels in the wide world known as the internet!

Feel free to comment if you have any questions; we’d love to hear from you!

In this article, we’ll explain what robots.txt files are and why you should use one on your WordPress website.

We’ll also show you how to optimize your robots.txt file for better performance.

What Is a Robots.txt File?

A robots.txt file is a text file that provides search engine robots with instructions.

Here’s an example of what a robots.txt file might look like.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php

In the example above, the robots can crawl everything on the website except for the wp-admin folder.

What Does Robots.txt File Do?

The robots.txt file helps search engines understand which pages they should crawl and index.

Best Robots.txt for WordPress

For most WordPress websites, the best robots.txt WordPress file is simple and tells robots to crawl all the pages on your website.

Do You Need a Robots.txt File for Your WordPress Site?

There are pros and cons to using a robots.txt file for a website.

On the plus side, a robots.txt file can help ensure that only relevant pages show up in the search engines.

It can improve the overall search engine ranking of your website.

However, there’s the potential for negative consequences if your robots.txt file is not set up correctly.

For example, if you accidentally tell the Google bot to ignore your entire website, your pages will remain invisible to search engine bots.

Carefully consider whether or not you need a robots.txt file for your WordPress site.

If you’re not sure, it’s generally best to err on the side of caution and include a robots.txt file.

How To Add Robots.txt File for WordPress

When creating your robots.txt file, keep the following items in mind.

• Specify all robots.txt directives in lowercase letters
• Include a trailing slash in paths (e.g. /path/to/page/)
• Avoid using wildcards

Use the correct file extension.

Save your robots.txt file with a .txt extension, not .doc, .rtf, or any other extension.

Where Is the WordPress robots.txt File Located?

The robots.txt file goes in the root directory of your WordPress site.

For example, if your WordPress site is example.com, place the robots.txt file at example.com/robots.txt.

You can also access the robots.txt file through the WordPress admin dashboard by going to Settings > Reading and scrolling down to the robots.txt section.

How To Use a Robots.txt File in WordPress?

Generally speaking, there are two ways to use a robots.txt file in WordPress.

1. Using a WordPress plugin
2. Manually adding the robots.txt file to your WordPress site

The easiest way to manage your robots.txt file is by using a plugin.

A plugin allows you to easily add, edit, and delete robots.txt rules from your WordPress admin dashboard.

To use a plugin, first install and activate a plugin like the Robots.txt plugin.

Once activated, you’ll need to visit Settings > Reading in your WordPress admin area and scroll down to the robots.txt section.

In the robots.txt section, you’ll see a list of rules that the plugin has automatically generated.

You can edit these rules or add new ones by clicking on the Edit button.

You can manually add the robots.txt file to your WordPress site.

To do this, you’ll need to connect to your WordPress site using an FTP client or File Manager in cPanel.

What Does an Ideal Robots.txt File Look Like?

You will find the following terms in a robots.txt file.

User-agent: This directive specifies which robot you want to target.

For example, Googlebot is the user agent for Google’s crawler.

Allow: Using this directive, you can specify which pages you want to allow robots to crawl and show in a search result.

Disallow: The disallow directive tells search engines which pages to prevent a search bot from crawling.

Sitemap: With this directive, specify the location of your website’s sitemap file.

Ideally, your robots.txt file should look something like this.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /admin/
Sitemap: example.com/sitemap.xml

The above robots.txt file tells all web crawlers that they can access all of the content on your website except for the /cgi-bin/, /tmp/, and /admin/ directories.

Additionally, it includes a sitemap directive that tells web crawlers where they can find your XML sitemap.

How To Optimize WordPress Robots.txt File for Better SEO

Use the following steps when you want to optimize your robots.txt file for search engine visibility and better results inside Google Webmaster Tools or the Bing Webmaster tool dashboard.

First, place your robots.txt file in the root directory of your WordPress site.

If it’s not, search engines may have difficulty finding it.

Second, you should use the robots.txt file to block any pages on your website that don’t add value.

For example, you may want to block the /admin/ page or any duplicate content pages.

Third, you should use robots.txt to specify the location of your XML sitemap.

It will help search engines index your website more efficiently.

Finally, make sure your robots.txt file is well-organized and easy to understand.

If it’s not, search engines may have difficulty parsing it.

How To Create and Edit a Robots.txt File With Yoast SEO

Using the Yoast SEO plugin, you can easily create and edit a robots.txt file from within your WordPress admin area.

To do this, head to SEO / Tools / File Editor and select the robots.txt tab.

You can add any directives you want to include in your robots.txt file.

It’s important to note that Yoast SEO will automatically generate a robots.txt file for you if one doesn’t already exist.

How To Create and Edit a Robots.txt File With All in One SEO

You can also create and edit a robots.txt file with the All in One SEO plugin.

You will do so inside the WordPress dashboard.

Go to the All in One SEO admin section and look for the robots.txt tab.

If you don’t see it, click on the cog icon to open the settings.

Once you’re in the robots.txt settings, simply add any directives you want to include in your file.

Like Yoast SEO, All in One SEO will automatically generate a robots.txt file.

How To Create and Edit a Robots.txt File via FTP

If you don’t want to use a plugin, you can also create and edit your robots.txt file via FTP.

You will need to connect to your WordPress site using an FTP client like FileZilla.

Once connected, navigate to the root directory of your WordPress site.

If you don’t see a robots.txt file, you can create one using a text editor like Notepad++.

After opening the robots.txt file, add any directives you want to include.

When finished, save your changes and upload the robots.txt file to your WordPress site.

It’s important to note that robots.txt is a case-sensitive file.

So, make sure you don’t accidentally change the robots.txt to Robots.txt or ROBOTS.TXT.

Doing so could prevent your robots.txt file from working properly.

What You Should Not Use the Robots.txt For

You should understand what you should not use robots.txt for.

Don’t use the robots.txt file as a way to hide sensitive or confidential information on your website.

If you want to block pages containing customer information or credit card numbers, you should use password protection instead.

To prevent search engines from indexing duplicate content, you should optimally use the rel=”canonical” tag or the 301 redirects.

Many websites do use the robots.txt file for duplicate content, so this isn’t a hard rule.

How To Create Different Rules for Different Robots

Let’s review four specific rules you may want to use with your website’s robots.txt file.

How To Use Robots.txt to Block Access to Your Entire Site

If you want to block all robots from accessing your WordPress site, you can do so by adding the following line of code to your robots.txt file.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

The “User-agent” directive tells robots which rule to follow.

The asterisk (*) is a wildcard that matches all robots.

The “Disallow” directive tells robots not to crawl any pages on your website.

In this case, we’re telling robots not to crawl any pages on our WordPress site.

How To Use Robots.txt to Block a Single Bot From Accessing Your Site

If you want to block a specific bot from accessing your WordPress site, you can do so by adding the following line of code to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /

In this example, we’re blocking the Googlebot from crawling our WordPress site.

You can replace “Googlebot” with the name of any other bot you want to block.

How To Use Robots.txt to Block Access to a Specific Folder or File

Use the following code to block robots from accessing a specific folder or file on your WordPress site.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/

The above code blocks robots from accessing the wp-admin folder on a WordPress site.

How To Create Different Rules for Different Bots in Robots.txt

You can create different rules for different bots by adding the following code to your robots.txt file.

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /wp-admin/
User-agent: Bingbot
Disallow: /wp-includes/

The above code provides instructions to block Googlebot from accessing the wp-admin folder and Bingbot from accessing the wp-includes folder.

You can replace “Googlebot” and “Bingbot” with the names of other bots you want to block.

How To Test Your Robots.txt File

Go to Google Search Console to test your robots.txt file.

Inside the Console, select your website, and click on the “Robots.txt Tester” tool.

Enter the robots.txt file you want to test and submit it for testing.

If your robots.txt file works properly, you should see a “Success” message.

If there are any issues with your robots.txt file, you’ll see an “Error” message that outlines the issue.

Wrapping Up

The robots.txt file is an important part of any WordPress blog.

It’s used to tell search engines which pages they should and shouldn’t index.

It can also specify the location of your XML sitemap.

If you don’t already have a robots.txt file on your WordPress site, you should create one immediately.

If you’re not familiar with them, no worry, let me define them for you.

A Google penalty is when Google penalizes your website for violating its terms of service.

This can result in a significant decrease in traffic to your blog, and can even cause your website to be removed from the search engine results pages altogether.

In this blog post, we will discuss what google penalties are, how to avoid them, and what to do if you get one.

What Is Google Penalty?

A Google penalty is a punishment that Google gives to websites that violate its terms of service.

These terms of service include things like spamming, keyword stuffing, and other black-hat SEO tactics.

If you use any of these tactics on your website, you run the risk of getting penalized by Google and improving your search rankings.

The penalties can range from a small decrease in traffic to your website to having your website completely removed from the search engine results pages.

Types of Google Penalties

There are two types of Google penalties, manual and algorithmic.

Manual Google Penalties

Manual google penalties are where someone from Google has manually reviewed your website and decided that it has violated the terms of service.

This type of penalty is usually given to websites that are using black-hat SEO tactics or spamming.

Algorithmic Google Penalties

Algorithmic Google penalties are where your website is penalized automatically by Google’s algorithm.

This can happen if your website is using techniques that are against Google’s terms of service, or if your website is not optimized for mobile devices.

Also read: What Is A Blog?

How To Avoid Google Penalties?

The best way to avoid Google penalties is to make sure you’re following Google’s terms of service.

This means using white-hat SEO techniques, avoiding keyword stuffing, and not spamming.

If you’re unsure about whether or not a technique is considered black-hat or white-hat, it’s always best to err on the side of caution and avoid it.

What To Do If You Get A Google Penalty?

If you think your website has been penalized by Google, the first thing you should do is check the Google Search Console.

This is a tool that allows you to see if your website has been penalized by Google.

If you see that your website has been penalized, you can submit a request for a review.

This is where you can explain to Google why you think your website was unfairly penalized.

If you’re not sure how to submit a request for a review, you can find instructions on the Google Search Console help page.

If you want to read about free blogs, click here.

How Do Google Penalties Affect Your Blog Or Website Ranking On The SERP?

A Google penalty can have a significant impact on your website’s search rankings on the search engine results pages (SERP).

If you are penalized, your website may no longer appear in the search results at all.

In some cases, you may see a drastic decrease in traffic to your website as well.

The Google penalty has the following effects on your blog or website:

• It can cause your website to be removed from the SERP altogether.
• Google penalty can cause a significant decrease in traffic to your website.
• It can negatively impact your website’s ranking on the SERPs.

What Are The Signs To Look Out For?

You might ask that how will you know if your blog or website has been penalized by google?

There are some tell-tale signs that you can look out for:

A Sudden And Significant Drop In Traffic To Your Website

When there is a sudden drop in traffic, it is one of the first signs that your blog or website might have been penalized.

If you see a significant decrease in traffic, it’s worth checking the Google Search Console to see if there is a penalty.

Your Website Is No Longer Appearing In The Search Results

If your website is no longer appearing in the search results, it’s a good indication that you’ve been penalized.

This can happen if your website is completely removed from the SERP or if your website’s ranking has been significantly impacted.

Your Website Is No Longer Indexed By Google

If your website is no longer indexed by Google, it means that Google has removed your website from its search results.

This can happen if your website violates Google’s terms of service.

To read more about types of blogs, click here.

Common Reasons For A Google Penalty And Ways To Avoid

There are a few common reasons why websites get penalized by google.

Some of these reasons include:

Spamming

Spamming is when you post irrelevant or unsolicited comments on other websites or blogs.

This is a surefire way to get penalized by Google.

If you want to avoid this, make sure that all the comments you leave are relevant and on-topic.

Other search engines may also penalize you for spamming.

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is when you stuff your website content with too many keywords in an attempt to manipulate your website’s ranking on the SERP.

This is a black-hat SEO tactic that will get you penalized by Google.

If you want to avoid this, make sure that your website content is relevant and contains only a few keywords.

Search engines like google are constantly changing and evolving.

This means that what may have worked in the past, may no longer work now.

As a result, it’s important to stay up-to-date with the latest Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices.

Link Farms

A link farm is when you post links to your website on other websites or blogs without adding any value.

This is another black-hat SEO tactic that will get you penalized by Google.

If you want to avoid this, make sure that all the links you post are relevant and add value to the discussion.

Unnatural Links/ Spam Links

Unnatural links/ spam links are when you post links to your website on other websites or blogs that are not relevant.

This is yet another black-hat SEO tactic that will get you penalized by Google.

If you want to avoid this, make sure that all the links you post are relevant and add value to the discussion.

Site-Wide Links

Site-wide links are when you post links to your website on other websites or blogs that are not relevant.

This is yet another black-hat SEO tactic that will get you penalized by Google.

If you want to avoid this, make sure that all the links you post are relevant and add value to the discussion.

Duplicate Content

Google will penalize you when you are putting duplicate content on your website.

You are not allowed to use content created by others.

Requesting A Review Of Your Blog Or Website If You Believe It Has Been Penalized Unfairly By Google

First of all, let it be clear does Google penalize a blogger’s website or blog unfairly?

Maybe, it does but not often.

If you think that your blog or website has been penalized unfairly by google then you can request a review by following these steps:

1. Sign in to Google Search Console.
2. Click the site’s URL.
3. In the left navigation panel, click Security & Manual Actions.
4. Under “Site status,” look for any messages.
5. Click Request a review.

By following the above steps, you can request a review of your blog or website if you think it has been penalized unfairly by google.

Related blog: Free and paid blogs.

What Is A Google Search console?

Google Search Console is a free tool that allows you to monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your website’s appearance on Google Search results.

This guide will show you how to use it effectively to maximize your website’s visibility on the SERPs.

How Can The Google Search Console Help?

There are many ways in which Google search console can help you.

Some of these ways include:

Monitoring your website’s search traffic and performance

Submitting your sitemap to google

What Are Some Of The Steps You Can Take To Recover From A Google Penalty And Restore Your Blog Or Website’s Ranking On The Search Engine Results Pages?

Here are a few steps you can take to try and recover from a Google penalty:

Identify The Reason For The Penalty

The first step is to try and identify the reason for the penalty.

This can be done by looking at the notification you received from Google or by looking at your website’s traffic data.

Once you have identified the reason for the penalty, you can take steps to fix it.

Fix The Issue

The next step is to fix the issue that caused the penalty.

This can be done by changing your website’s content or by removing any spammy links.

Once you have fixed the issue, you can submit a request to Google for a review of your website.

Wait For The Review

After you have submitted a request for a review, all you can do is wait.

Google will review your website and determine if the penalty can be lifted.

Take these steps to try and recover from a Google penalty.

A Google penalty can have a big impact on your blog or website’s ranking on the search engine results pages.

If you think you have been penalized, make sure to take the necessary steps to fix the

If you believe that your website has been penalized unfairly by Google, you can go about requesting a review in the following way:

First, you need to identify which google penalty you think your website has received.

Once you have done that, you need to fill out a reconsideration request form.

After you have submitted the form, all you can do is wait and hope that Google will review your website and remove the penalty.

What Are Some Of The Steps You Can Take To Recover From A Google Penalty And Restore Your Blog Or Website’s Ranking?

If you want to recover from a Google penalty, there are a few steps you can take:

• First, you need to identify which google penalty you think your website has received.
• Once you have done that, you need to fill out a reconsideration request form.
• After you have submitted the form, all you can do is wait and hope that Google will review your website and remove the penalty.

What Is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a free tool that allows you to track, measure, and report your website’s traffic and performance.

This guide will show you how to use it effectively to maximize your website’s visibility on the SERPs.

She is using Michele Marcucci’s WordPress plugin NoFollow Free, which lets the blog owner remove the nofollow tag from commenters with a certain number of posts.

In the short term she said it has worked like a charm however I am interested to see how this works out for her long term.

Problems With Removing The Nofollow Tag

There are two quick and easy ways to encourage more comments on your blog.

1. Add a top commenters list
2. Remove the nofollow tag from the homepage link which commenters can add when they leave a reply

Both of these methods have similar pros and cons and both are more suited on blogs where a large percentage of readers own a website ie. web development and blogging related blogs.

Last year I used a top commentators list for a few months and I removed the nofollow tag from comments for a few weeks as well.

Both methods gave similar results:comments went up but quality of comments went down, way down.

This is why the nofollow tag remains and why the top commentators list has not returned.

So why do the quality of comments usually drop?

The reason is the extra people who are commentating on your blog are likely to be commentating just for that nofollow link.

Whereas regular readers to your blog will want to reply to your posts with comments which continue and expand the discussion, those who are commentating because the nofollow tag has been removed have no geninue interest in contributing as their main focus is to just leave a comment so that a link to their blog is generated.

Another factor which greatly adds to this problem is the popularity of nofollow lists.

These lists list all the blogs which have the nofollow tag removed from the comment area.

Many bloggers are frequently visiting all the sites on the list to increase the number of backlinks to their blog.

The PageRank juice you actually get from leaving a comment is incredbily low due to the number of links on the page which are getting juice.

You would get more juice if you simply took the time to write a good article and then got some incoming links to it but it’s hard to actually convince many bloggers of this.

The people who are using these nofollow lists are aiming to leave comments on as many blogs as possible therefore they do not have time to actually write a good comment.

Infact, many of them don’t have time to even read the post.

So many of them leave replies such as ‘Great Post’ because they don’t have to take the time to read the post.

When I briefly removed the nofollow tag the number of these ‘Great Post’ type posts shot through the roof.

Some tried to be cuter though.

They didn’t read the post but got a general idea of the content of the post from the title and left a comment accordingly.

However, this sometimes backfired.

I remember doing a review of a new website which targeted bloggers and I criticized it a lot and told bloggers not to waste their time on it.

Clearly, one commenter didn’t read the review because the comment which was left said something like ‘I agree with you, site X is a fantastic resource’.

Needless to say I deleted the comment.

Removing The Nofollow Tag But Moderating Comments

So far I have talked about the poor quality of comments which a nofollow blog can generate though I have assumed that the blog owner is not spending time moderating comments.

Alysson has installed the NoFollow Free plugin which allows you to set the number of comments which the nofollow tag is removed, so it does give her much more control.

Even though I’m sure this would improve the quality of comments a little, I would still be reluctant to go down this route.

Moderating Comments Is Time Consuming

First of all, I think moderating comments would be time consuming.

You would have to set some benchmark for the type of posts that are acceptable and you would have to pay attention to who is commenting each time.

For example, if a regular reader posts great comments all the time but one day leaves a ‘Great Post’ comment you would allow it however if a blogger constantly leaves nothing but ‘Great Post’ type comments you would probably delete them, as it would clearly be an attempt to get the nofollow tag removed from their links.

This is a black and white example but in practice it wouldn’t be so obvious.

Regardless, it’s still prefer to use my time more productively online.

Ramon Eijkemans from Search Written thinks the same way :

It’s just that comments are not under my control because of all the spam. I have better things to do than constantly editing comments.

Removing The Nofollow Tag Rewards Commenters

The main argument many bloggers give for removing the nofollow tag is to reward their commenters.

I do think that it’s good to try and reward regular readers but is this really the best way.

Surely competitions or a thank you post for the top Commentators is better.

Or perhaps the best way to repay commenters is to just keep writing good posts!

As I have said many times before, I don’t think you should have to ‘bribe’ readers with the promise of some PageRank juice in order for them to comment.

Surely if you write good enough posts it will generate good discussions
Doug Heil left a great comment on Alysson’s post about this:

Good people with good intentions will comment on your blog or my forums no matter if a link is given credit by Google.
If that comment is good and helpful, readers will follow that link to the owner of the site via the link.
Who cares if it gets any juice from Google?
I don’t.
Most quality people in this industry could not care less.

Do you really want worthless comments to your blog?

Do they really encourage more discussion?

Surely quality is better than quantity.

I’d much prefer 10 meaningful comments which contributed to the discussion than 100 poor one line responses.

Keyword Stuffing Runs Rampant

OK, this is more of a pet hate than anything else but it annoys me when commentors leave the name of their website in the comment name field or even worse, they put the keywords they are trying to manipulate Google with.

I much prefer it when bloggers use their name.

I mean, when replying to comments it’s much better to say ‘I disagree with your comment Peter’ than ‘I disagree with your comment

Making Money Online’. I’m starting to be kinda stubborn with this and I’m certainly much more likely to respond to those who put a first name in (or nickname/alias).

Am I the only one who gets annoyed by this? I don’t want to encourage people to do this which is another reason why the nofllow tag remains on comments.

Conclusion

It will be interesting to see if Alysson’s blog does get more comments, specifically more comments which are of a good standard.

Hopefully it works out for her but in my opinion those who only comment on a blog to get on the top commenters list or to get some PageRank passed to them rarely bring much to the table.

I’m sure there are some BloggingTips readers who do actively comment on nofollow free blogs so my advice to you is this : Don’t worry about PageRank and don’t waste you’re time leaving poor comments across the web.

You are much better spending your time writing a good post for your readers.

Also, I do think you should actively comment on other blogs if you have time.

It’s a good way to network and get some links to your blog but I encourage you to take the time and write something worthwile.

Remember, your comments are in many ways an advertisement for you and your blog and people are much more likely to click on your blog link if you left a good comment.

I‘d love to hear what your view on the nofollow movement is.
Do you think that all NoFollow blogs attract spammers or do you think it depends on the genre and how the blog owner markets his blog?
Perhaps there are some bloggers who frequently comment on nofollow free blogs but make the effort to leave a comment. 

As long as there’s at least one link pointing to a page, search engines will find it.

Without going into too much detail, the most important concept you should know is that they use the information gathered during their crawling efforts to assign search rankings.

To determine where a page should rank, search engines need to crawl it.

Some of your website’s pages, however, are probably more valuable than others.

Your website may have pages consisting of duplicate content, for instance, or it may have landing pages designated for paid advertising campaigns.

Allowing search engines to crawl these unwanted pages will only divert them away from your website’s more valuable pages.

To block search engines from crawling unwanted pages, you’ll need to create a robots.txt file.

What Is a Robots.txt File?

Also known as a robots exclusion standard protocol, a robots.txt file is a computer file that contains instructions on how search engines should crawl the website with which it’s used.

You can use it to tell search engines which pages, files or directories of your website they shouldn’t crawl.

When they first land on your website, search engines will check it for a robots.txt file.

If a robots.txt file is present, they’ll comply with its directives by avoiding the specified locations.

So how can you do this on your own blog or WordPress site?

Adding A Robots.txt File To Your WordPress Blog Or Website

[su_youtube url=”https://youtu.be/Fee4DY5gvLg”]

Taking the video tutorial one step further, here are a few best practices when adding a robots.txt file to your site.

1) Upload to Root Directory

Search engines will look for your website’s robots.txt in its root directory.

If you place it in a subdirectory, they may not find it.

Even if search engines do find the robots.txt file, they won’t obey its directives since the standard specifically requires a root directory placement.

After creating a robots.txt file, upload it to the root directory where your website’s homepage is located.

2) Create a Single File

You should only create a single robots.txt file for your website.

Whether you want to block search engines from crawling one page or 1,000 pages, you can place all the necessary directives in a single file.

Distributing the directives across multiple robots.txt files won’t work.

You must name the file “robots.txt,” and you must place it in the root folder of your website.

Since you can’t have multiple files with the same name in the same directory, you can’t use multiple robots.txt files.

3) Save in Plain Text Format

For search engines to recognize and honor your website’s robots.txt file, you must save it in plain text format.

It shouldn’t contain any Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) code, Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) code or Cascading Stylesheets (CSS) code.

All it needs to convey crawling instructions to search engines is plain text.

Therefore, you can create a robots.txt file using a basic text editor like Notepad for Windows or TextEdit for macOS.

Just remember to check the file extension before saving to ensure it shows “.txt,” which denotes a plain text format.

4) Place One Directive Per Line

When creating a robots.txt file, place one directive per line.

To block Googlebot from crawling two pages, for example, you should create two separate directives, each of which placed on a separate line.

You don’t have to specify Googlebot twice.

Rather, you can specify Googlebot a single time directly above the pair of directives.

The robots exclusion standard requires the use of groups.

Each group should contain a line mentioning the user agent or agents for which the directives are intended, followed by the line-separated directives themselves.

If you use multiple groups, separate them with an empty line.

Here’s an example of a directive group that blocks Google from crawling two pages:

[su_note note_color=”#E5E5E5″]
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /category/page-one.html
Disallow: /category/page-two.html
[/su_note]

5) Beware of Capitalization

You need to be conscious of capitalization when creating your website’s robots.txt file.

While user agent names — the names of search engines’ crawlers — aren’t case-sensitive, filepaths are.

If a filepath listed in a directive uses lowercase letters when the actual path uses uppercase letters, search engines won’t obey it.

A filepath is a location in a directive group that points to page, file or directory.

All filepaths should begin with a forward slash, followed by the exact location of the page, file or directory that you want search engines to avoid crawling.

Incorrect capitalization will make the directive invalid, meaning search engines will still crawl it.

6) Test For Errors

It’s a good idea to test your website’s robots.txt file for errors.

Google offers a robots.txt file testing tool at that can reveal common errors.

To use it, add your website to Google Search Console, visit the testing tool’s URL and select your site from the drop-down menu of verified properties.

Google’s robots.txt file testing tool will display your website’s robots.txt file.

If there are any errors present, such as incorrect syntax, it will highlight them.

You can also use Google’s robots.txt file testing tool to verify the blockage of URLs.

If you created a directive to block Googlebot from crawling a page, enter the page’s filepath in the field at the bottom of the testing tool and click the “TEST” button.

7) Specify Sitemap

While its main purpose is to block search engines from crawling specific pages, files or directories, you can use a robots.txt file to specify your website’s sitemap as well.

After uploading a sitemap to your website’s root directory, you can create a unique type of directive in your site’s robots.txt file pointing to its location.

Search engines will visit the sitemap where they can find an easy-to-read list of all your website’s pages.

The sitemap directive uses the following format:

[su_note note_color=”#E5E5E5″]
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml
[/su_note]

Keep in mind, the filepath for your website’s sitemap should contain your site’s domain and its prefix.

You can omit this information when creating traditional disallow directives.

Wrapping Up

With a robots.txt file, you’ll have greater control over how search engines crawl your website.

You can use this simple text file to instruct search engines not to crawl specific pages, files or entire directories while also providing them with a sitemap.

Search engines don’t require it, but a robots.txt file is worth creating if you want search engines to crawl some parts of your website and not others.

Plus, Google’s search results are becoming incredibly engaging: Many search users prefer to use search results (open “People Also Ask” results, clicks image and video carousels, etc.) that getting a click from search results is getting harder and harder.

With the introduction of new and flashier ways to be seen, you still have to learn how to creatively and dynamically exploit those offered tools.

Being seen with so many others attempting the same technique is just as hard as it was when visibility relied only on ranking.
How to get more people click your search listing in SERPs?

Here are three really effective ways:

1. Monitor Your Click-Through

The first step to improving your search snippet visibility is to set up monitoring of how your pages are performing right now and get alerted if anything changes.

Finteza is an advanced analytics platform allowing you to keep a close eye on your site performance in search and all the various channels.

To monitor your click-through from organic search:

• Register an account at Finteza
• Add their tracking code to your site and give it some time to accumulate some data
• Click “Sources” and there choose “Search”
• Go to “Pages” to see how your top landing pages are performing in search:

This gives you bird’s eye view on your site organic performance in organic search.

It’s a great way to analyze and evaluate your old content.

Using Finteza, you can also set up a retargeting campaign to target those search referrals better if they choose to return to your site.

Repeat steps above at least weekly to see if any of those pages start losing clicks from search: These might need some work.

Here’s exactly what you may want to do:

2. Use Semantic Analysis

Google uses a variety of analysis methods to identify high-quality content that meets their users’ needs.

One of the key components of Google’s content evaluation process is semantic analysis.

Basically speaking, semantic analysis is about clustering your key topic into subtopics and concepts that constitute it.

To give a quick example, if we were to apply semantic analysis to [hiking], we’d come up with a variety of underlying concepts including, National Parks, Mountains, picturesque trails, being outdoors, and even birdwatching.

All of those concepts relate to hiking in some way or another.

Broadly speaking, semantic analysis helps machines understand natural language – the way that humans communicate – including context, goals, etc.

When it comes to search optimization, semantic SEO helps:

• Create more indepth and richer content that meets Google’s expectations
• Optimize for intent (what’s the end goal behind each search)
• Give Google enough context for them to create a more clickable search snippet for your listing.

Another example of semantic analysis in action is Google’s results for [where it was filmed].

While the query is seemingly absolutely generic, Google is able to understand this question relates to the movie “It”.

Text Optimizer is the semantic analysis tool that goes right to the source, i.e. Google search snippets.

For each query you type, it would collect Google’s search snippets and apply semantic analysis to them to come up with the list of underlying concepts:

Including 20-25 of these concepts into your content will help Google better understand your text, and create richer more clickable search snippets. Here’s a more detailed review of the site I did previously.

3. Optimize for Rich Snippets

Rich snippets have become the new keywords.

These little details are what causes your listing to “pop” in a search, catching the eye of the user no matter what place on the first page you occupy.

Proper use of rich snippets are a requirement for being seen.

“Rich snippets” are search results providing the user with more answers right within SERPs.

To qualify for rich snippets your web page should have rich markup:

Here are the supported types of rich snippets:

Reviews
If you have reviewed a tool or a product, use Aggregate Rating structured data for your search snippet to look like this.

This will populate stars in search that definitely draw an eye!

Recipes
Recipes will have some nutritional and preparation information, like how long it takes to cook and how many calories are in each serving.

Events
Events will show dates and times for each event for quick reference.

Every event name is linked in search results giving you more clickable links in search.

Business
There’s a number of structure data types that allow you to add more details to your brand knowledge graph (NOT for local businesses though).

These include: Official social media accounts, logo, and the corporate contact:

Movies and Books
Movies and books will also show off a ranking system, and some product pages have a star rating alongside price.

HowTo
HowTo markup will help Google to locate more information from your tutorial, for example, number of steps, time to complete, etc.:

HowTo Schema shouldb’t be used for recipes though.

Other than that there are no official restrictions to certain types of tutorials that can have it.

One word of caution here: Only use structured data when it absolutely makes sense.

Google frowns upon using Schema just for the sake if rich snippets.

If it is not an actual review, don’t use the ratings markup, as it could backfire.

Google actually sends manual penalties for a structured abuse, so read the documentation properly to make sure you follow all the rules!

Optimizing for rich snippets relies heavily on whichever website builder and/or CMS you are using.

For most of them there are lots of plugins and addons allowing to quickly integrate structured markup.

The above tips will hopefully help you generate more clicks from your current organic positions without having to invest in improving it.

See it as a low-hanging fruit opportunity to improving your traffic!

Do you have a tip for optimizing search snippets?

Let us know in the comments!

This means your SEO campaigns have to adapt and change with the times or else you’ll be banished to the bottom of the search engine result pages.

One of the changes you have to make is a shift in focus toward mobile optimization.

While traditional forms of SEO are still relevant, Google is moving its attention toward mobile traffic, which means you should too.

We’re going to discuss mobile optimization in this article, touching on what it is, why it’s so important, and how to go about doing it.

So, What Is Mobile Optimization?

The general idea behind mobile optimization isn’t too different from traditional SEO.

If you’re unfamiliar with some of the particulars of search engine optimization, we’ll give you a brief rundown.

After all, this is a beginner’s guide!

The Basics of Optimization

Search engine optimization is the act of making your site fit the specifications and preferences of search engines.

Most of the time, we’re trying to optimize for Google.

Search engines like Google generate search results through the use of an algorithm, which takes roughly 200 factors into account before creating a list of sites.

When a user types a keyword phrase into the search bar, those terms are run against a search engine’s entire index.

The algorithm then uses its numerous search factors to identify the pages on the web that are most relevant to the user search.

Optimization is an effort to rank as the top result for particular keyword phrases.

This entire process is also true for mobile optimization, although there are slightly different actions to take.

Mobile optimization is the act of optimizing your pages to be more fit for mobile users, as search engines tend to make the distinction between desktop and mobile searches.

As the web shifts in a mobile direction, the distinction between mobile and desktop may get a little blurrier, which is one of the reasons why it’s time to shift your SEO focus.

We’ll talk more about the specifics of mobile optimization in a bit, but first, let’s talk about why it’s so important to focus on mobile traffic in this day and age.

Why Mobile Optimization Is so Important

Before we give you a layout of what to do for mobile optimization, we’ll give some insight into its importance.

Take a look at the following points:

1. Mobile Searches Are Growing

It’s always a great idea to meet user needs.

Users are progressively using their phones to access search engines, and the trend doesn’t seem to be slowing.

As smartphones and mobile activity ramp up, mobile searches will follow.

In fact, mobile searches have recently surpassed desktop and tablet searches, becoming the most popular search method online.

So it makes sense to optimize mobile pages if customers are operating online in a dominantly mobile way.

2. Search Engines Are Indexing Mobile-First

Google has recently stated that it will shift toward a “mobile-first” approach to indexing.

This means they’ll take the mobile version of a page over the desktop page.

At this point, that doesn’t mean too much for site owners.

If you don’t have a mobile page on your site, it doesn’t mean you won’t rank well or be indexed.

The current shift just means that, given the option, Google will rank your mobile page in place of the desktop page.

Your desktop pages will still work on user cellphones, although your interface might be less responsive to their needs and provide a poorer user experience.

So you’ll still be available online, but your site might not be as enjoyable as a competitor’s who has optimized for mobile.

While mobile-first doesn’t have a huge effect yet, it indicates that Google is shifting in a mobile direction.

They’re liable to make sweeping changes that heavily favor mobile sites.

If there aren’t grand changes to the algorithm, we can reasonably infer that there will be a progression of small changes that benefit mobile pages.

It would be wise to get ahead of the curve and start optimizing for mobile now.

3. Voice Search Is Mobile

You may not be a huge fan of Siri or Alexa, but the fact is, voice search is on the rise.

As technology makes voice search easier and more effective, people will begin incorporating it into their lives.

Amazon and Google’s voice search technology is now ubiquitous among family homes with Alexa and Google Assistant.

It’d be wise to get out in front of this trend as well, considering few businesses have considered voice search in their optimization campaigns.

It’s important to note that these searches exist under the mobile umbrella, and will be hugely important in years to come.

4. People Shop Mobile

Many consumers are shifting their product research into a mobile activity. In other words, people search, think about, and buy products on their phones these days.

Think about it: when you want to find some kind of product or service, you search “best haircut near me,” or “best ceramics store near me.”
You aren’t the only one doing it either.

In fact, mobile “best” searches like the ones listed above have grown 80% in the last couple of years.

Those searches have always taken place, but they’re shifting into the mobile domain.

Now that we’ve covered a bit about why mobile is important, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of how to do it.

How to Optimize for Mobile Traffic

There’s a huge overlap between desktop and mobile optimization methods.

Again, because this is a beginner’s guide, let’s cover some of the fundamental pieces of your overall SEO campaign.

We’ll begin with the factors that apply both to mobile and desktop optimization.

Keyword Optimization

The foundation of any optimization effort is the keyword phrase.

This is the term users type in when they’re searching for something.

Our goal as optimizers is to identify keyword trends, optimize for them, increase web traffic, and increase conversions.

The first step in that equation is identifying keyword trends through research.

Google Analytics is the most common interface people use to conduct research.

Through interfaces like Google Analytics, it’s possible to see the volume of keyword searches, the areas in which they’re searched, the competition you have when trying to rank for that keyword, and a whole lot more.

Once you find the term to optimize for, you should then create content that relates to the topic and contains well-placed keyword phrases in the correct spots.

However, don’t stuff your content full of keywords where they don’t fit.

Try to use the phrase wherever appropriate: in the introduction, at least one header, and in the conclusion.

Content Creation

The next piece in the puzzle is the creation of regular content.

When you conduct research and identify a high-volume keyword with low competition, create a blog post or a similar form of content that can be optimized for that term.

Once you get into the swing of things, pumping out well-optimized posts will become second nature.

You need this stream of content to spread your content out to each corner of your niche and to push that content on your various social media platforms.

Having relevant, shareable content is an essential piece of both mobile and desktop optimization.

Mobile-Specific Optimization

The two practices above are just a couple of the most important pieces of general optimization.

If you’re interested in getting more insight into the foundations of SEO, professional optimization sites like SEOexplode are equipped with the comprehensive information you’re looking for.

With those things out of the way, let’s take a look at some mobile-specific practices:

1. Check Your Mobile Usability

The first thing you should do is run your site by the source itself: Google.

Google Search Console allows you to take a peek at some of your metrics, as well as run a search on the viability of your mobile pages.

It can be difficult to comb through your website looking for errors that could affect your mobile rankings, especially if you’re new to the process of mobile optimization.

Luckily, Google Search Console gives you the rundown on issues that may be affecting your user experience, search rankings, and more.

You’ll get a report that states whether or not your site is mobile-friendly, as well as a read-out of the issues your site contains.

This is the first step you should take in your mobile optimization efforts.

You’ll have a clear idea of the work you need to do after your mobile usability report.

2. Get Rid of Those Popup Ads

There may be millions of sites that preach the gospel of popups, and 3.

Check Your Site Yourself It may like an obvious thing, but make sure you browse through each piece of your site yourself. Check with your desktop computer as well as your cell phone and tablet.

If you have a good user experience on your own site, odds are, Google’s algorithm is sophisticated enough to notice the quality of your page.

Generally, if your mobile site runs smoothly on all fronts, you’re doing well.

Check all links, page arrangments, text sizes, and any other page elements you may have incorporated.

4. Mobile Keyword Optimization

Remember that people have less space to explore, read, and click when they’re operating on a phone.

Meta descriptions, titles, and even keyword phrases in some cases need to be limited when optimized for mobile.

Try to be as concise as you can when thinking of all forms of mobile text.

5. Focus More Heavily on Local

Think about your own experience again. When you’re out and about and looking for a product or service, you’re more likely to conduct a local search than you are when you’re using a desktop.

“Near me” searches and “best” searches are increasingly mobile, and you should factor this into your optimization.

This may mean creating more localized pieces of content, focusing your attention on existing locally-optimized pages, and ensuring all of your location-specific pages are optimized for mobile.

Have Faith in the Process

It’s crucial you have faith in the process of SEO and give your campaign time to flourish.

Take in as much new SEO information as you can and incorporate it into your efforts as you see fit.

Optimization takes some time to take hold, and various pieces of the process take longer than others to start sending results back to your page.

Additionally, make sure you’re comprehensive and persistent with your campaign.

If you’re feeling like optimizing your site will require more effort than you can give, it may be a good idea to talk to a professional.

You don’t have to go through the process alone, and there are skilled individuals out there who have a lot of experience in SEO.

These are people who have actually grown a page to reach the top spot in a search result.

While there’s a lot you can do on your own, seeing exceptional rises in traffic is a lot more likely if you work with someone who has a solid understanding of optimization.

Think You’ll Need Some Help?

SEO follows a formula, but it’s a complicated one. It often seems like keeping a well-optimized site is a full-time job.

Optimization done right takes time, effort, and skill.

If you’re interested in boosting your mobile traffic with the help of pros, then explore our site for the information you need.

More than anything else, keyword research determines whether your ads reach the right people and whether your target audience finds your website when they search for your products.

But what exactly is keyword research, and why is it so important?

Read on – our detailed guide will answer these questions and many more.

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword research involves investigating and refining a list of keywords to target and use in digital marketing.

Think of keyword research as a three-part process:

• First, you identify keyword topics to research.
• Next, you research specific keywords for importance and applicability.
• Lastly, you build and launch a marketing strategy incorporating those keywords.

When done properly, keyword research forms the first major step in content creation.

Why is Keyword Research Important?

Keyword research is a cornerstone of modern digital marketing.

Doing in-depth keyword research before starting a new campaign, writing a new blog, or creating any new content is always a good idea.

But why?

In truth, there are many reasons why keyword research is so fundamental and valuable to digital marketing. Keywords are the base data blocks Google collects information about.

If you know the keywords your target audience members type into Google, you learn:

• What they’re thinking
• How they approach your brand’s industry
• What they’re interested in
• And more

All of that information is vital when creating new digital marketing materials.

More importantly, keywords help your marketing materials rank highly with Google’s search engine algorithms.

They’re critical for good SEO or search engine optimization.

For example, imagine that you want to create a fresh batch of blog posts for your company website.

However, you need to make sure the blog posts show up on Google and that their topics answer questions your target consumers have.

So, you do a little keyword research.

Once you figure out the right keywords, you can:

• Make blog posts with titles incorporating those keywords
• Make content with keywords woven throughout, thus helping those pages rank highly with Google
• Make content that includes topics and answers your audience members are interested in

Bottom line: keyword research is important for more reasons than one.

Don’t think you can skip it, even if you’re rushing to publish a new blog post – you’ll regret it in the long run.

Keyword Overview: Basics to Understand

Before diving into how to practice keyword research properly, let’s look at some key terms you’ll encounter.

• Keyword – A word that helps to describe the content on a page. Keywords are usually nouns or verbs.
• Search result – A webpage produced by Google in response to a user search. SEO algorithms generate search results by looking at keywords to determine whether certain pages are appropriate for user searches.
• Short-tail keyword – A keyword between one and two words long. Short-tail keywords have the highest average search volume and the most competition.
• Middle-tail keyword – A keyword between three and four words long. These keywords have average search competitiveness and search volume.
• Long-tail keyword – A keyword with five words or more. Long-tail keywords have the lowest search volume but the least competition. However, they also have the highest average conversion rate since they tend to be very specific and focused on individual searchers.
• Search volume – The total number of user search queries for a given keyword in Google.
• Search intent – The assumed or stated purpose of a Google search (the reason someone types in specific keywords).
• Keyword strategy – The overall strategy marketers or businesses use to best leverage keyword research results, such as which keywords to target.

Benefits of Keyword Research

Keyword research provides a wide range of benefits to marketers and enterprises that use it well.

In fact, keyword research is so advantageous that there’s no good reason to skip it when developing a new marketing campaign or writing a new blog post.

For example, keyword research provides you with greater marketing insights into your target visitors or customers.

As you understand these targeted individuals more deeply, your marketing campaigns become more effective and tailored to their needs or emotional triggers.

Furthermore, keyword research lets you grow traffic more easily.

Through SEO boosts, keyword research helps your site rank more highly with Google.

When your target visitors search for related keywords, they’re more likely to see your site show up at the top of their search engine results.

Combined, both of these effects often lead to increased customer acquisition, more sales, and related benefits.

How To Do Keyword Research

As you can see, keyword research really isn’t something you can skip.

Instead, it’s best to think of keyword research as a necessary – and potentially informative! – step of the digital marketing process.

But it’s one thing to know why keyword research is beneficial.

It’s another thing to see those benefits yourself.

To ensure your keyword research helps your enterprise survive and thrive in the modern market, take a look at the tips below.

1. Make a List of Topics

First, you need to figure out a starting point of things to write about.

You should create a list of topics you want to research.

Naturally, these topics should be relevant to your business industry or niche.

Say that you run a carpentry company and you want to bring people to your brick-and-mortar store.

That means you should research topics related to carpentry, such as:

• Carpentry tutorials
• Differences between different types of wood
• When to repair carpentry items and when to hire experts (like you)
• And so on

Ideally, you should come up with between five and 10 “topic buckets” based on what you think is most useful for your business.

If you have trouble coming up with topic buckets, put yourself in the shoes of your target audience members.

What do they like? What do they look for?

What are they most likely to think about when they find your brand for the first time?

Answering these questions can give you valuable insights into the minds of your potential customers and help you come up with topic buckets in no time.

2. Find Keywords for Those Topics

Once you have a list of topics, you need to find keywords to fill the “buckets”.

You can brainstorm this step, as well. Let’s pivot to a new example: a blogger who wants to bring more traffic to their site to increase their ad or affiliate marketing revenue.

Consider what keywords are most relevant for such a business owner.

The blogger identifies a topic bucket for “blog layout tips”. That kind of bucket might have keywords like:

• How to create a new blog
• How to fix blog layout
• Blog layout suggestions
• Blog theme ideas
• Best blog themes

These are all middle-tail or long-tail keywords. It’s helpful to come up with longer keywords at first because short-tail keywords can often be derived from the longer ones after the fact.

Once you have an initial list of keywords for your topic buckets, you need to use keyword research tools.

There are dozens of different tools available, some paid and some free.

We’ll break down the best keyword research tools to leverage later in this guide.

But no matter which tool you use, they all operate essentially the same way.

You plug keywords into the tools, and the tools provide you with:

• Search volume for those keywords, or how often people search for them
• Related keywords (to help you fill out your topic buckets even more)
• Resonance, which is an estimation of how well a search term relates to a brand, product, or topic

3. Find Related Keywords

Let’s focus more on the related keywords your keyword research tools produce after you input your first batch of search terms.

Related keywords are incredibly important.

They help you fill up your topic buckets, as mentioned above.

But they also help you further understand the search intent of your target audience members.

Recall the blog business owner who wants to improve traffic to their website.

They run a research session for “blog theme ideas”.

They find, thanks to their keyword research tool, that “blog theme ideas” is often related to keywords like:

• Blog themes for free
• Blog themes for photos
• Best paid blog themes

All of these terms provide more insight into their target audience members.

From the keyword searches above, the business owner deduces that their target visitor:

• Is curious about paid versus free blog themes
• Wants to know which themes are best for displaying photos compared to longer posts

This is very valuable information.

Armed with this knowledge, our hypothetical blog owner might decide to write lots of posts answering these needs.

4. Define Search Intent for Each

However, good keyword research goes above and beyond the basics.

Depending on your keyword research tool, you may be able to find the search intent for each primary and related keyword.

Search intent is always assumed, but it’s fairly accurate (especially for more common and competitive keywords since Google has more data about searcher actions for them).

For example, the search intent of  “shoes for sale” is fairly obvious: the searcher wants to buy new shoes!

Even so, looking at expected search intent for each keyword you research is a good idea.

The better your idea of your target searchers’ intent, the better prepared you’ll be to make top-tier, high-converting content in response.

5. Analyze Competition

Many quality keyword research tools include analyses of how competitive each keyword is. Why does this matter?

Firstly, highly competitive keywords cost more if you run ads using them. For example, standard Google PPC or pay-per-click ads only require you to pay if a customer clicks on one of your ads. But these ads run on a bidding system. You have to compete with other bids before your ad shows up for specific keywords.

The more competitive a keyword is, the higher the starting and proceeding bids are as well. In addition, competitive keywords might apply to multiple search intents, multiple target audiences, and so on.

While competitive keywords have their places, less competitive keywords might be better in some circumstances. They’re cheaper, easier to use for your Google ads and blogs, and are oftentimes more specific to individual users.

Build Keyword Strategy Based on Results

You should develop a keyword strategy based on the results of your keyword research. Decide:

• What keywords to target above all else. These keywords should be used in content titles and throughout its copy, for example
• What secondary keywords to use to enhance SEO
• What semantic keywords to use to further direct your content toward specific users/your target audience members

In theory, the better results you get, the more effective your strategy is.

Produce Content for Those Keywords

Once you have a strategy in place, it’s time to produce content using your research keywords. You can leverage keywords in lots of digital marketing content, like:

• Blog posts
• Online tutorials
• Product descriptions
• Website copy
• YouTube ad or video descriptions
• And more

Smart keyword use helps your brand be more competitive in its niche, and it’s just as important in the earliest days of your business as it is when you have a committed audience.

Pro Tip: Continuously Analyze Keywords

Keyword research isn’t something you can do once and leave behind. Instead, remember that keyword intent – and keyword competition levels! – constantly change.

What was a good keyword a year ago may not be an excellent keyword any longer.

For the best results, you should continuously analyze keywords and update existing content while finding new, high-ranking keywords for fresh content you put out.

Keyword Research Tools

The keyword research tools you use heavily impact the quality of your research results. They also affect how much information you get with each research session.

Free Keyword Research Tools

Good news; you can use free keyword research tools if you’ve already stretched your marketing budget or have not yet launched your business. Here are some great free keyword research tools to consider.

• Google Keyword Planner Tool – Google Keyword Planner integrates easily with AdWords/Google Ads. For a free tool, it’s remarkably robust, offering a ton of historical statistics and other information when you input keywords for your research.
• Google Search Console – While not a dedicated keyword research tool, Search Console is a great place to start if you already use Google Analytics. This free service lets you monitor and maintain your site’s presence by offering limited keyword research functions, plus some other controls.
• Google Trends – Google returns once again with Trends: a free tool that lets you input multiple keywords simultaneously and filter them by different categories. It’s an excellent free research tool if you want to know how much web interest there is around specific keywords.

Paid Keyword Research Tools

Overall, paid keyword research tools produce better results and provide more information than free tools. Check out these recommended keyword research tools when you can spare the cash.

• Ahrefs – This pricey keyword research tool is highly desirable thanks to its intuitive design, easy user controls, and in-depth research results. It provides an excellent range of relevant keyword suggestions and has the largest database for keywords overall, totaling 5.1 billion distinct keywords across 200 countries.
• SEMrush – SEMrush is a bit pricey, but well worth it since it lets you compare keywords and domains against each other plus gather information from both Google and Bing search engine results. Its position tracking feature displays how keywords and their competitiveness evolve over time.
• Exploding Topics Pro – Available in a free and paid model, this tool offers advanced analysis techniques for your keyword search needs. It analyzes many data points from a wide range of sources like shopping queries, standard searches, tech news, online community chatter, and more.
• Answer the Public – This tool shows raw search engine results and insights by displaying questions people ask related to inputted keywords. The tool is also beneficial since it breaks down results in intuitive graphic displays.

Frequently Asked Questions

Wrapping Up

Keyword research is the best method to discern online searcher intent and ensure your company is well-positioned to capture target traffic over time.

Good keyword research truly can make your brand stand out from the competition, especially if your company operates in a crowded niche.

Still have questions or want to know more about how keyword research works?

Leave a comment or check out our other guides today.

You’ll also want to have evergreen content. Make sure that your content will continue to be relevant for months, or years to come, rather than just useful or informative for a short span of time.
While it’s smart to use current, buzz worthy news to drive in the traffic, continue to make most of your content evergreen.
Pro Tip: Search websites like Quora.com for commonly asked questions in your niche and create blog posts that answer those burning questions. This is also a great way to come up with headlines for your articles and blog posts.

 

Your content needs to be meaty.

The Dirty Little Word

Blogger Outreach