Hi, and welcome back to the simple SEO podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Lindteigen and I am so glad. You're here with me today. Today, we're talking about three things. You can do three SEO tips, search engine optimization tips you can use today to help get more traffic to every blog post that you write. I am so excited to dig into this with you and help you learn how to get more traffic, because if you're taking the time and putting in the effort to create blog posts, I want you to get traffic to them. I don't want you to ever feel like, oh my gosh, I keep doing this. And the only person who ever reads my blog is my mom or my grandma, because. Well, they are awesome. They're not going to buy from you. And so your business isn't going to grow. If they're the only people who are reading your blog posts. So let's jump in and talk about three things you can do to get more traffic to your blog posts. And then. Stay with me to the end because I have one bonus tip. That's going to help you monetize your blog posts. And I know that's something we all want to do. All right. So the very first thing. That I want you to do is to think about your reader. What are they interested in? What would they want to read about? What could you tell them that would be helpful? What type questions do they have? Because I want you to create content. That is going to have an audience. There's no point in. Spending the time and putting in the effort to write a blog post if no one is interested in it. So how do you determine if there's interest in the topic that you want to write about before you write about it? That's by doing some SEO or search engine optimization. Keyword research. Now you've heard me talk a lot about keywords. And the fact that you really need to be careful that you're choosing a keyword, that your website can rank for, that you have a good chance of showing up on Google's first page, all of that. And that still applies here. What I want you to think about the, when you're creating blog posts or you're trying to come up with. Blog content. Is what would my ideal customer be interested in? What questions do they have? What questions do you get asked all the time where you feel like, oh my gosh, if I have to answer this question one more time. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. That's probably a really good blog post for you to write about if you're in a group and there were lots of people who would be your ideal customer. In that group and they're asking questions. That might be a really good idea. You can also go to Google and start typing in a sentence that's related to your ideal customer or to your. Particular niche. And see what Google gives you in the suggested search box. So when you start typing, what does Google suggest? Because that's based on current information and. Google thinks that you're asking that because other people are asking that same information. So use some of these tools to learn how to spot opportunities, where you can find. Potential blog topics that have interest. If you're familiar with keyword research, you've taken simple SEO content with me, you really understand. How to do the keyword research and choose the right keyword. Then you probably already know how to do this process because this is module two of simple SEO content is where we really get into what type of content we're creating and how we're creating and how we're finding all the opportunities and all of that. But what I want you to do. As use whatever keyword research tool you're comfortable with. Honestly, I get questions. What about this one? This one, this one. You can use any of them. They should all have the same data because they should all be using the Google API, the Google information on the backend. So your search information, your competitiveness, all of that should be the same from one tool to the next. So use whatever tool you're comfortable with and do a little bit of research. See where you can find opportunities for keywords. Because a lot of the searches that we see are in question format. Very often my blog posts are based on this exact type of research. They're formatted in a question or they're using a key phrase of 3, 4, 5 words altogether. That are making up a key word. Because that way, I know there's an audience out there looking for this information. That's what I want you to understand. We need to verify that there's an audience looking for the information before we take the time to create the blog post, because when you create content that has an audience or has searched demand, And you can rank for it. You have traffic coming into your site. It's much easier to grow your blog and to get traffic. When you write about topics that people are interested in. Make sense, right. It seems really super simple, but there are a lot of people. Who create blog posts. That have no audience, there's no search demand. There was no interest in that subject. And so that's how they end up feeling like they're wasting their time and their effort. And I don't want that for you, my friend. All right. Number two. I want you to always, always, always write for the reader because you have to be really careful in making sure that you're providing helpful content. These are some key buzzwords for Google. Okay. You guys. Helpful content. Was the name of a separate algorithm update that they would run it moved into the core algorithm update in 2024, March of 2024. So very recently. You need to make sure that your content is helpful, it provides value. It gives your reader, your searcher information that they can't get somewhere else. If you just have like a regurgitation of somebody else's information, or you have like a listicle. They're probably not going to rank you very high because that's what Google is trying to get away from, because it's not super helpful to the reader. Google is really honing in on this and really focusing on this. Google has been focused on high quality content and fresh content and all of that for more than a decade, but Google seeing more competition. Okay. With the birth of AI. There's rumors that chat GPT is going to have a search function. Some people are starting to use it. We already know that gen Z is more likely to search on social, like Tik TOK and Insta versus Google. So Google seeing some competition. So they want to make sure. That they maintain their threshold, their market share. And the way that they maintain their market share is by continuing to give. Really really great results, really great information. That's helpful. That's got information. You can't get somewhere else in the search results that they're serving up on the first page. The other thing that you want to understand is the grading system for Google. E a T your experience, your expertise, your authority, and your trust. This is how your website, every single page on your website is graded now from Google's perspective. So they don't want you just to write about something you've heard about. They want you to write about something that you actually have been involved in. You've actually done. You have that background, you have that one-on-one experience something that you can provide a different perspective on. Because again, Google wants to maintain their market share. They're seeing more competition. The way that Google works as a business is. Google sells ads to. Businesses who are then hoping to connect with searchers through ads? Well, if people, if fewer people are searching on Google, they're not going to be able to sell as many ads and they're not going to make as much money. That's why Google's got so much focus on the quality of the search results and really making sure that people are not able to play the game and kind of game the system and get around that and rank with crummy content. So you, my friend need to include things that are going to be helpful to your reader. You need to show how you set yourself apart. What experience can you bring to this? What authority do you have? How do you build trust? All of that, so that your reader starts to build a connection with you and Google starts to trust you and want to show your content to more people. So make sure you're always writing for your reader. If you're not sure how to do this, I actually go further in depth in simple SEO. SEO content module two, where we really talk about how do we write content for Google and what do we do and how do we make all of this work? Then the third step, this is the magic step to get the traffic is to actually do proper SEO or proper optimization. On that blog post, when you're writing a blog post, if you're not doing SEO on it. Nobody's ever going to find it. That's just the bottom line. You have to do SEO. Your content deserves to be optimized. Because without optimization without SEO. Google doesn't really know what it's about. They're not really going to trust you. They're not really going to like you. They may not even know who you are, and they're definitely not going to show you to their customers and their customers are the people who could become your customers. If you could get them to your site. So, this is where we go back to keyword research. If you started with keyword research, like I teach you to do. And you have an idea of a keyword that your website could rank for. You've now written. A blog post. That should be pretty much about that key word. So you should have naturally used that keyword in your copy and in your headers and in your title. Then you're going to do the optimization. You're going to continue the optimization, which means you're going to write a title tag and a meta description that follow Google's best practices. If you don't know what those are, do yourself a favor, run to my website. marketing.com. Go to the freebies tab. So etched marketing.com forward slash freebies. Request a copy of the complete beginner's guide to SEO. That's going to walk you through how all of this works, what happens, and it has a checklist on the back page to make sure that you've done what you need to for this blog post. She going to write a title tag and a meta description. Following Google's best practices. You're going to use your keyword in your image file name. You're going to use it in your alt text. You're going to use it in your header and in your copy, all the different places that Google is going to look. So get that guide. If you don't have it yet, that's going to walk you through it. Now I promised you a bonus and optimism and monetization, not optimization, but monetization tip. When you are writing your blog post, there's actually a couple of things you can do. I'm going to give you two bonuses. One is make sure. From a monetization standpoint, make sure the content that you're creating, the blog posts that you're writing. Ties somehow to your business, your product or your service, because we want to drive really targeted, relevant traffic to our website from our blog. And when you do SEO, you do blog. SEO, every single blog post that you write. Is another opportunity for you to drive targeted relevant traffic to your website for free from Google. So if you write 10 great blog posts that target keywords that your website can rank on page one of Google for you now have 10 chances to be found by your ideal customer and have them come visit your website. Start to know who you are begin to like you and begin to trust you because they're starting to see you as a resource. Now when they're ready to purchase. If your content that you've been writing about ties to your product or service. There are more likely to want to buy from you because now they've started to feel like they have a relationship with you. They know you, they trust you. They read your content. You're an authority for them. The next thing we can do. We all know we've got to be building that email list and growing that email list. So your second bonus tip here is to add an opt-in. To your blog post. So if you have an opt-in, like I've said, get the free SEO guide, that SEO guide that complete step-by-step beginner's guide to SEO. That's an opt-in. It's also something very helpful for you. My listener, who's new and learning about SEO. It's a little bit of love that I'm giving to you. In exchange for your email address so that I can send you that guide. And then each week you'll start to get some information from me. Another tip another SEO, one. 1, 0, 1 lesson, a podcast, episode, something that's going to help you grow your websites, SEO, grow your traffic. That's the same thing that you can do. My friend on your blog. Using an opt-in. So make sure if you don't have an opt-in yet you work on creating one that will be helpful to your ideal customer. And add that to your blog so that as people come and they find you from Google, they read your blog posts. They start to connect with you. You have something that's of value to them. That can help them. They're more likely to opt into your email list. All you have to do is have it there as an option. They will, some who are interested will opt in. They will request that guide, that download that PDF, watch the free class, whatever it is. So that my friend. Is how you can both. Monetize your blog post. And use it to grow your email list. So there's so much you can do with a well optimized blog post. If you are ready to do this, or maybe you're thinking, I don't want to blog, but like you, Rachel, I have a podcast. I do show notes. Hello, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Your podcast show notes. Page can be done as a podcast show notes, blog post, where you get all the same benefits from Google by doing Google SEO or blog SEO on that show notes page. I teach how to do that in simple SEO content. I'm also working on simple podcast SEO. So if you're a podcaster, stay tuned. That class is coming soon. And man, is it going to be exciting because I'm going to teach you how to grow your downloads and how to grow your Google traffic, both from your podcast. I know isn't that amazing. All right, that's it for today. Make sure you join me back here. If you're not following the show yet, make sure you do that so that you get new episodes when they release each week. And I will see you back here next week. Bye. For now.