Search engine optimization (SEO) is just as important for your blogs as it is for any business site out there. You’ll miss out on free traffic without optimizing your blog for search engines.

When done right, SEO can help drive more organic traffic to your blog. And that’s not it. It also improves user engagement and makes it easier to establish authority in your niche while ensuring sustained growth.

Now, the thing is that you have to employ various SEO techniques to ensure your blog gets visible in SERPs. But, where do you start? Don’t worry; we’ve got you covered!

Blocks with a word blog written on them

Begin with Keyword Research

The most important technique to optimize SEO for organic traffic is to research the right keywords to gain insight into your potential customers.

To increase blog traffic using modern SEO techniques, consider leveraging white label SEO outsourcing to enhance your site’s optimization efforts without the need to build an in-house team. This approach allows you to access expert services, such as keyword research and link building, which can significantly improve your search engine rankings and attract more visitors.

Before you begin your search, you may want to check where your blog stands now. Many paid and free tools are available for you to define a starting point for your campaign. Using a website traffic analyzer is probably the simplest. It tells you how many people visit your blog in a given timeframe and how it compares to other similar blogs in your niche. You can also find info about some high-performing keywords, which provides you with a starting point for your keyword research.

However, you need to learn about the different types of keywords you can find. For instance, some types of keywords that you can look into are:

  • Short-tail: These types of keywords are short, maybe one or two words, and very broad in terms of context and relevance. These words are not ideal for ranking as anyone can use words like “website” or “content”.
  • Long-tail: These keywords are more on-point with specific requirements such as “How to create engaging content for websites”. These are searched less, as not many people type whole sentences, but those who do get exactly what they are looking for.
  • Buyer Intent: These keywords mean that the audience already has the intent to buy a service or product, such as “purchase content creation course” or “where to buy the best targeted website traffic”
  •  Informational: These are keywords that people use when they want to gain some information or knowledge, such as “how to increase blog traffic”.

Although you can focus on any keywords, it will be considerably hard to go after short-tail keywords in the beginning as they’re highly competitive. Long-tail keywords are more useful here. Let’s take a look at why your attention needs to be on utilizing long-tail keywords:

  • Less Competitive: There is less competition with these kinds of keywords as they use specific strings of words, narrowing the search and increasing the chances of a higher ranking of your website in Search Engine Results Pages or SERPs.
  • Increased Organic Conversions: Since people use these long-tail keywords to ask something specific, they know what they are looking for, which makes them more plausible to become actual customers and engage positively with the content.
  • Engaging Content: The content becomes more relevant and thus a positive experience for your website visitors.
  • Better user experience: By targeting long-tail keywords, you can create content that directly addresses the searcher’s specific query, providing a better user experience and increasing the likelihood of them staying on your blog.
  • Better Content Quality: These keywords help create engaging and relevant content that offers what the customers are looking for.
  • Authentic Content: To avoid penalties, it’s crucial to verify the authenticity of AI-generated web content before it goes live. Utilizing an AI humanizer is advisable to achieve this.

To identify and choose the right long-tail keywords, there are a few steps that you can take:

  • Specify the core topic you want and inject relatable keywords into your text
  • Take help from SEO tools such as Google Keyword Planner, etc., that would give you the best combination of words to use
  • Track the number of times a keyword has been searched and how relevant it is to your content
  • Constant monitoring is the key strategy to increase organic blog traffic on your site

Your website can get more visibility and traction in SERPs when customers find that your content is relevant and informative, which also leads to organic conversions. And you have a higher chance of achieving that when focusing on long-tail keywords.

Work On Page SEO for Your Blog

In modern SEO strategies, on-page SEO plays a vital role since it directly relates to how search engines perceive your content and assign rankings accordingly.

For blogs and websites, on-page SEO means employing various techniques to create a positive user experience that automatically reflects in search engine rankings. Here are some important elements that help ensure your blog’s on-page SEO is on point.

Generate Relevant Headings and Meta-Descriptions

Meta descriptions and headings are the first string of words viewed when searching on Google or other engines, making them very important for CTR click-through rates.

The heading of the content must have the main keywords while also being catchy enough to attract attention. On the other hand, Metadata is not something that directly affects rankings; however, it plays an indirect role by influencing user interaction.

Optimize Content with Your Keywords

Google has updated its algorithms to focus on the quality of the content being produced and how much it relates to what the customers look for. Focusing on these points lowers the bounce rates, as they make content engaging.

When dealing with content, be sure not to ignore header tags. Header tags, or H1, H2, etc., help organize the content and make it easier for viewers to read. These headers also help in natural search engine optimization, as Google understands the flow of your content.

Create Simple SEO-Optimized URLs

Your blog or site URLS needs to be simple, relatable, and include the main keyword to help increase organic traffic. Ensure the URL is readable and simple enough for users and search engines to remember.

Don’t Forget Internal Linking

One of many very important organic SEO tips for on-page SEO is to naturally set up hyperlinks in your text that help users reach out to other relatable pages on your blog.

Internal linking may not directly help with blog traffic, but it surely helps with rankings by increasing user experience.

It means, that in addition to creating user engagement, using internal links also helps your site to be indexed by search engines.

Focus on Creating High-Quality Content

Person writing content on a laptop

Another important part of the strategy for organic SEO is content creation. It showcases creative, engaging writing, and relevant information and has the right types and amounts of keywords for the users to easily search. At the same time, it helps search engines to easily crawl the text and rank it in SERPs.

Moreover, content that is relevant and informative has a higher chance of getting maximum organic backlinks as good quality sites are deemed authentic and genuine. More backlinks automatically bring your site to Google’s algorithms that your content is relevant where the bounce rate will be low, with more session time leading to better rankings. Also, increase traffic to your site by adding its link in your email signature. This will also boost your branding efforts.

Use Keywords Effectively in Your Content

While keywords are a very important part of the SEO strategy, it does not mean to use them unnaturally or stuffing your marketing content with keywords. Not paying heed to this point can actually lead to a negative impact on your search engine rankings.

Keyword stuffing refers to using keywords too many times in content that the user experience is hampered, and it looks forced. Keyword stuffing is now a thing of the past. Google’s algorithm is now too smart to be tricked by such black-hat SEO techniques.

Keywords should be divided into primary and secondary categories, where primary should be mentioned in the heading, meta tags, and once or twice throughout the content. Other secondary keywords can be added in a very subtle manner into the content. The best ratio is 1-2% for keywords to be embedded in the content.

Work on Building a Robust Backlink Profile

Backlinks serve as a certificate of authenticity for the search engines, as they reflect the relevancy of a site’s content. They are basically links on other blogs or websites that take the customer back to your page.

If you want your SEO campaign to truly work, you can’t ignore the importance of building backlinks. Here’s why they’re vital:

  • SEO Rankings: In Google’s search algorithm, backlinks are one of the primary parameters that ensure better rankings for pages with more natural backlinks.
  • Trust and Authenticity: When genuine, high DA/DR websites link back to your blog, it automatically makes your page authentic in the eyes of visitors and search engines.
  • Referrals: Blog traffic routed through backlinks start a conversation amongst the users about your page.

There are various ways to get backlinks, especially after artificial intelligence and new SEO technology. However, every backlink is not deemed authentic. Therefore, it is best to create an effective strategy to use only genuine sites such as media or government sites; also, the linking should be relevant to your content. Here are a few ways to earn high-quality backlinks for your blog:

 

Strategy Description
Develop Excellent Content Create in-depth, valuable content that naturally attracts links.
Guest Blogging Write articles for reputable blogs in your niche to gain backlinks.
Skyscraper Method Improve popular content and suggest linking to your better version.
Broken Link Strategy Find broken links, create relevant content, and request a new link.
Leverage HARO Register on HARO to get quoted and earn backlinks from authoritative sites.

 

Measure Performance Regularly

What is SEO strategies that truly work? You can find it through proper monitoring and website auditing. In fact, the most important thing about running a blog SEO campaign is to keep an eye on how things perform. So many times, you have to tweak your strategies a little, and regular monitoring is important for making informed decisions.

Ideally, you have to track certain metrics to make data-driven decisions. For instance, you should never ignore the bounce rate, which tells how engaging your content is. Similarly, if you notice a drop in your SEO organic traffic, it also tells you a lot about your strategies.

You should also monitor your keyword rankings carefully. Depending on whether you’re losing or gaining keyword rankings, you can tweak your SEO strategy. This also tells you when you should focus more on improving content quality.

Now, the good thing is that you can find many free and paid SEO tools to track these metrics and analyze the performance of your SEO campaign. Ideally, you can begin with Google Analytics (GA) and Google Search Console (GSC).

Google Analytics helps you identify how your user behaves on your WordPress blog. It also explains more about your traffic sources and overall conversion rate. Other metrics like time on site, bounce rate, and overall traffic can also be tracked using GA. On the other hand, GSC provides you with data on search queries, clicks, impressions, and average position.

Conclusion

It may seem easy to start a blog, but it’s a never-ending task to drive traffic to it. What you should know is that if you follow the right SEO techniques, you will eventually yield results. Remember, your visitors can take various routes to get to your blog, but you need to identify the one that works best for you. So, be sure to use modern SEO techniques, but always monitor your performance to make data-driven decisions for real success.