How to Get Visitors From Google? (SEO Explained!)

Once you have your blog up and running, the next step is to drive traffic to the blog.

How to drive traffic to my blog?

A few of the most popular traffic generation methods include:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Social Media Marketing (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.)
• Pinterest Marketing
• Through guest blogging
• Through building backlinks
• Through email marketing
• Community platforms and discussion websites like Reddit, Quora, etc.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

It is the method of optimizing your blog to achieve maximum traffic from search engines like Google and Bing.

SEO works by exhibiting to the search engine that your content has the overall best result for a user’s search. This way, search engines will rank you higher for SEO-optimized posts.

Why is SEO important?

Because search engines are a major source of traffic on the web. According to Laire Digital, 53% of all website traffic comes from search engines.

With search engines getting a majority of traffic on the internet, ranking on top of search engines becomes highly important for gaining traffic. 

And SEO helps us do just that – it helps us rank better on search engines & get more blog traffic.

How do search engines work?

When you search for a query, search engines filter billions of web pages to identify the most relevant query and provide it to you.

Through advanced algorithms and ranking systems, Google identifies the best results and show them to us in the first page.

Wondering why we are talking about Google and not Bing or Yahoo?

It’s because according to Statcounter, Google nearly has a whopping 90% share of the Search Engine market. 

How does Google determine the “most relevant” result?

Google determines the best results based on a number of ranking factors (more than 200 factors according to Backlinko).

A few important factors include:

• The number of backlinks to your page (the more the merrier)
• The number of times keyword is used in the page (too much or too less is bad. An optimum no. of keywords are best)
• How old is the page (the older the better, but keeping it updated is also important)
• If the webpage is easy to read and navigate (better page usability means better rankings)
• How fast the page loads (the faster the better)
• Age of domain (longer age is better)
• Keyword in title (you must add the keyword you wish to rank for in post title)
• Length of content (longer content ranks better. Try to hit 1500 words or longer for all posts)
• If SSL certificate is present (sites with SSL certificate ranks better), etc.

What are the different types of search results?

There are 2 types of search results: organic search results and paid search results.

Organic Search Results: The search results provided by search engines based on their algorithms and ranking factors are referred to as organic search results.

Paid Search Results: These are advertisements that appear above or below the organic search results. The website owners pay the search engine to display their web pages for certain keywords.

Paid and organic search results are completely independent of each other.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is all about identifying the keywords that have low competition but are highly searched by internet users.

We then try to rank for these high-traffic, low-competition keywords.

How to find the best keywords?

Let’s unveil a few ideas that help you find keywords in your SEO journey.

1. People Also Ask

Google has a “People also ask” section that provides you good keyword suggestions.

2. Related Searches

Whenever you type a keyword or a phrase on Google search engine, it suggests related searches at the end of its search results.

3. Search Predictions from Google and YouTube

Whenever you type something on Google, there are search suggestions that Google and YouTube puts forward to you.

4. Google Keyword Planner

The Keyword Planner tool from Google shares the most authentic information of keywords on the web. You can find detailed information on relevant keywords, monthly keyword searches and competition.

5. Ahrefs Keyword Generator

Keyword Generator is an amazing free tool from Ahrefs that provides you with the a lot of details like related keywords, keyword difficulty, keyword search volume, country-wise keyword results, and search engine wise keyword results (Google, Bing, YouTube, etc.)

6. Other Keyword Research Tools

Here is a list of other tools worth checking out:

• Answer The Public
• Keyword Surfer
• SEMrush 
• ExplodingTopics.com
• Uber Suggest

Pro Tip: Answer the questions you find in Google’s “People Also Ask” and “Related Searches” in an FAQ section on your blog post. You should try to provide brief answers (4-5 lines) for at least 5-10 questions. This can help you rank better for related searches and also get listed on the featured snippet section.

Which keywords should I target: long tail or short tail?

According to a study from Backlinko, more than 90% of the Google searches are long tail keywords.

While starting out, it’s best to target long tail keywords with low competition. As your search traffic grows, you can slowly start targeting short tail keywords with greater demand.

On-Page SEO

On-Page SEO is the practice of optimizing individual blog posts to rank higher and drive more traffic from search engines.

How to optimize my posts for On-Page SEO?

There are many ways to optimize your posts. The important strategies include:

• Use the main keyword in your post title and headings.
• Using Meta Description: An optimized meta description can improve the clicks to your post.
• Using keywords in your content: An optimum no. of keywords in the content can boost rankings. Keyword stuffing (i.e., adding a keyword too many times) and not using keywords at all could hurt your rankings.
• Using similar words: Try to add synonyms and similar words in your content.
• Image optimization: Add a descriptive file name to image along with “Alt text” and “Image title“.
• Positive user experience: Make sure that the posts load correctly and looks good for reading
• Content quality: Write high-quality & engaging content that is 1000 words or longer with images, videos, graphs, statistics, etc.
• Post URL: Include the main keyword in the post URL
• Adding Inbound links: Inbound links are the links added from a post to other posts in your blog. Linking to your own other posts can help boost rankings.
• Adding Outbound links: Outbound links are the links from a post to external websites. These can also boost rankings and help your post get indexed by search engines.

If you didn’t know: Alt text helps readers to understand the content of an image that fails to load on the screen. Make it a habit to add alt text to images.

Building Backlinks

Backlinks are the links pointing from one site to another.

For example, if I link from theblogstrategist.com to your website, then you got a backlink from me. On the other hand, if you link to theblogstrategist.com from your blog, then we got a backlink from you.

The more the backlinks, the better. So, our aim is to collect as many backlinks as possible.

Which blogposts gets the most backlinks?

The posts that provide really high-quality content gets the most backlinks.

The major types of posts to generate backlinks are:

• Really long posts (like 5000-10000 words or even longer) that provide a ton of information and are 10 times better than all the existing content out there.
• Posts that contain a lot of statistics and data. Whenever people copy statistics, they link back to the source. This is especially the case with journalists and authoritative blogs (they always link to source content). You might already have noticed many blogs publishing “ultimate list of statistics” posts. These posts are aimed to generate more backlinks.
• Infographics and eye-catchy images also generate a good number of backlinks. Whenever people use your images, they will attribute it you with a backlink to the page the images were taken from.
• Income reports. There are only a handful of bloggers that publish income reports regularly. And the ones who publish generates a lot of backlinks as they get often featured on “top earning blogs” posts.