3 Simple Ways To Improve Your Search Engine Optimsation

Following up from my SEO Tips For Beginners post, I wanted to list a couple more simple and beginner friendly ways to boost your blog/websites SEO. SEO is complicated, I'm just going to throw that out there and make it loud and clear. I've been researching and teaching myself as much about SEO as I can for the last 6 months and some of it still sounds like a completely different language to me!

The good news is you don't have to be an expert to make effective changes to your SEO and start seeing progress. It's always handy (and cheaper) if you can get by with basic SEO knowledge, especially when it come to working on your own website SEO.

Make it super easy to share your content.  If you make it extremely easy to share your post or page on desktop and mobile, people will be a lot more likely to share your lovely content with the world. Sharing your content not only increases your traffic but get's your link out into the big wide open water of the internet.

Seed your content on as many platforms as possible. Another way of getting your link out onto the web. Seeding is when you plant a link to your website or post on sites like Stumble Upon and Reddit. These sites are great at getting people who may never come across your website organically (typing your keywords into a search engine). I've noticed that since I started seeding my links on these websites, Stumble Upon has made its way into my top 10 sources of traffic!

Link to other pages on your site or blog. Internal linking is so easy to do and is great for your SEO. By linking to other pages on your site you are creating your own little web. The spiders I talked about in my SEO beginners post, love a good web to crawl. Creating your own web means that search engines like Google will see those links on your site and check them out, they will then index them if they haven't already, so that your post or page will show up in future organic searches.

The most important thing to remember about SEO is that it takes time and patience to see the results of your hard work. It takes Google a while to index new sites and get all the backlinks and extra stuff sorted, so be patient if you don't see results straight away. 

Have you been sorting out your SEO recently? Or do you leave your SEO to sort itself out?

How To Use Google Analytics: Channels and Traffic Sources

As soon as you step foot in Google Analytics you are bombarded with different tabs and endless possibilities as to what it can do (not going to lie, it still scares me a little). Understanding your analytics can really change your outlook on your blog or website, so it's important to at least have a basic understanding of it. 

In this post, I'll be focusing on the area I use the most, the channels and traffic sources tabs. These help you grasp a better understanding of where your readers and customers are coming from and what areas you need to improve to gain more traffic. 

To find your channels and source/medium tabs, head over to your Google Analytics, scroll down to Acquisition (It's the one with the arrows pointing to the right)

Channels

Channels shows you what kind of places your traffic comes from and it groups them into 4 main areas, in order of the most used:

Most of my traffic comes from referral traffic and my organic search is way down at the bottom (oops). If you've had your domain name/blog or website for a while, you might want to take a look at your SEO to boost your organic search higher up the list. I've recently changed my domain so it's to be expected that my organic is at the bottom, as I've lost all my backlinks. 

Let's take a closer look at what each of these channels actually mean though and what they can tell us. 

Referral - Links from other websites e.g. people featuring your post in their own posts and linking to you. My top 5 referrals are below for Cat Crawford, as you can see, people find my blog through Bloglovin, then from Jenny Purr, as she recently linked to me in a post, and then there are some forums and RSS feeds at the bottom. This just gives you a better idea of where your traffic is coming from and allows you to see what sites are linking to you. 

Direct - This is when someone types in your URL or clicks on a direct link to your site. What I get from this is that my top post from January is my SEO tips for beginners post, a handy thing to know when planning posts in the future, as I now know people really want simplified SEO posts. 

Social - What social media platforms are bringing the most people to your blog or website. My top social media platform is Twitter as I post regular promo tweets. I've also been spending a little more time on my Pinterest, so I can see from this that my efforts are paying off! I've also noticed that people are using the app Pocket to save my posts and people are also finding me on Stumble Upon. This means I should think about focusing a little more on those platforms as there's clearly an audience to be tapped into from those channels. 

Organic Search - Finally there's Organic Search, this is where my SEO comes into practice. Below are the keywords that people have used to find my blog, people are still coming here for beauty posts but people are also using my URL as a search term to find me. Over time this will improve and my keywords will change, but as I've changed my domain name I still have to build my keywords for this domain. This can be very useful if used alongside my tips from Finding Keywords and How To Use Them.

Source/Medium

The source/medium tab is basically a more detailed version of the channel tab. Instead of just telling you what kind of channel your traffic is coming from, it also tells you specifically what URL your traffic has come from. 

It's pretty much a summary of everything from the individual channel tab. The most popular way to get to my site is to click on a direct link or type my blog address into the address bar, then from Bloglovin, most likely the Bloglovin feeds of my followers and then from the link Jen very kindly posted on her blog. 

This just gives you a better overview of where your promotional efforts should be. Google Analytics also shows you graphs to give you a better visual indication of how your traffic is looking. I'm not going to go into reports or any of the stats you'll see on all of these pages just yet, I don't want to overload you with information. As long as you can grasp these basic lists, you can have a much better understanding of how to improve your blog/website. 

Have you ever looked at your blog/websites traffic? What parts of analytics do you wish you knew more about? 

How To Include Keywords Without 'Keyword Stuffing'

In my last keyword post, Finding Keywords and How To Use Them, I touched upon something called 'keyword stuffing'. 'keyword stuffing' is when you try and fit as many keywords as possible into your content, so much so that your sentences no longer make sense. People tend to give this a go when they're trying to quickly boost their SEO, but Google does not take kindly to these people.

Google wants us all to play nicely and not cheat at the ranking race, so they penalise those who try and cheat the game. Websites who get found of 'keyword stuffing' get pushed down the rankings and are eventually impossible to find, we do not want to be one of these people now do we?

To prevent yourself from 'keyword stuffing' without noticing, make a list of keywords and phrases

and sort them in order of importance. These might be keywords relating to your posts subject if you're a blogger, or keywords and phrases relating to your websites subject if you're a freelancer or small business. Order these by average searches (see the post linked at the beginning to learn about using Google keyword planner to do this) put the most searched for keywords and phrases at the top and the least searched for at the bottom.

Choose your main keyword or phrase for your title. This can be the most popular keyword on your list or one that you feel best fits your subject matter.

Pick 4 more keywords that you think will fit seamlessly into your page/post content. Nobody really knows for sure how many keywords Google likes to be included in content, but it's a safe bet that if they make perfect sense included in your content, then you're safe. Sometimes I will work backwards, write out my post and then try and fit in keywords where they make sense and add to the sentence, a bit like a word jigsaw puzzle.

Proof read until you can't proof read no more. Read over your copy as many times as you can, leave it and go back to it the next day if you have to. This is so you can make sure it makes complete sense to humans, if it feels clunky or doesn't quite make sense, then you'll notice it whilst you're proof reading.

Have you ever found yourself 'keyword stuffing'? Have you had a practice finding your keywords and including them into your posts or website text? 

5 Benefits Of Having A Unique Domain For Your Blog

One thing I spent a very long time deciding when I first started my blog, was whether to pay for my own domain name. Investing any money in your blog, especially when your followers are still growing and you're trying to find your feet, can be a scary thought. Luckily, domain names are not too expensive, for 2 years I pay around £15 for both my .co.uk name and my .com name. So is it really worth getting a domain name? Does your blog really need one that badly?

It all comes down to what your blogging goals are, do you want to make it a business? Is it something you want to take seriously and monetise? Do you want to be able to work with brands and PR companies?

There are so many benefits of having your domain name that a lot of bloggers overlook. It is the next step in your blogging career and it can have a dramatic impact on its growth.

Increases credibility  - Having your own domain name gives you that extra look of professionalism. By getting rid of your .blogspot or .wordpress extension you are showing you're ready to stand out on your own and take things a little more seriously.

Easier to swap your blog over to a different CMS - If, like a lot of first time bloggers, you've started your blog on blogger and you now feel you want to move to Wordpress, having your own domain will make the switch a lot smoother. One of the trickiest parts about moving from one CMS to another is keeping all your back links in tact, if your domain is the same no matter what hosting you're using, then it's one less thing to worry about.

Branding - Using your blog/business name as your domain can further cement your branding. By bagging your blog/businesses name you have made sure your brand is completely sacred to you, no one else can call their business the same name, as you've already claimed it.

Makes you more appealing to PR company's and brands - Having your own domain means that you are building your own domain authority and trust flow (how trusted you are as a website). These are two elements that brands and PR agencies will look at before deciding whether you're worth contacting. These businesses are looking to build good strong links back to their own website, which means they need to know your site is worth linking from.

Memorable for you and your readers - This ties in pretty much with the branding and credibility points made above. Typing out your whole blogspot domain or wordpress domain can take a long time, it can also be hard for others to remember. If you have a short and snappy domain, it is more likely that people will remember you and they will find it easier to link back to you. It's always safer to assume everyone is a little bit lazy (I know I am), so make everything super easy for them.

If you haven't got your own domain name yet and you've been on the fence for a while, hopefully I've given you a bit more to think about to help make that decision. If I've managed to sway you with my magical words, there's a few sites I can point you to to get you set up. The first is GoDaddy.com, which is the site I manage my domain on. I find it fairly easy to set up and they're also reasonably priced. Or, one that I've heard a lot of people talking about is Bluehost.com, another site that offers domains and seems to be used by a good few bloggers and business owners.

Have you bought your own domain yet? Have you seen any noticeable changes in growth since you switched to your own domain? 

Creating An Archive And Why Your Blog Should Have One

Since changing the focus of my blog to marketing and SEO for bloggers and creatives, I decided that I needed a good archive page to make sure my older posts don't get lost forever.

You'll notice on the navigation bar a page called 'Archive' this houses links to all of the labels I've used on my blog over the last few years and also categorises the posts into month and year. It's very similar to the blogger widget that used to grace my sidebar, but a lot nicer to look at. 

Having a blog archive never seemed too important to me until now, but there are a few reasons why you should think about creating your own unique archive page. 

It conveniently groups your posts by their label, allowing for an easy to navigate experience for your readers. Someone may stumble upon your blog and want to read more posts on that particular subject, if you make it easy for them to find it, they'll spend longer on your site, which will improve your sites bounce rate (the average time readers stay on your site). 

An archive can increase views on older posts. Sometimes a post you are really proud of can get lost or not receive the views it deserves. If it is archived correctly and is easy to find, its views could be greatly improved over time. Someone may have read the post when it first went live and wish to find it again to link to it or mention it on their social media, how terrible would it be if it was impossible to find?!

Increases your blogs credibility by showcasing its history. In the world of the internet today, there are blogs and websites popping up all over the place, so which one should you trust? By human nature, people will gravitate to sources with a firm history, if you can show that your blog or website has a long established history, you can gain a degree of credibility. 

Try and make your archives as visually engaging as possible, if your readers are looking for something in particular, their eyeballs want to to see a simple, easy to read archive. That is one of the main reasons why I designed my archive like I did, it's pleasing to the eye but simple to understand and navigate.

Have you given any thought to your blog or website archive? Do you find yourself looking in other sites archives to find relevant content? 

SEO Tips For Beginners

The world of SEO has always been a tricky ocean to navigate, the reason being is that it is ever changing. Don't let that put you off learning all about it though, it still plays a massive part in the success of your blog or website. 

Let's start with what SEO actually is and how it works. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, which refers to where your blog/website ranks in the search engines. If you own a beauty blog and you type 'beauty blog' into Google, are you amongst the 1st page results? Those that are will probably have worked on their SEO to get there. 

Search engines send out tiny 'spiders' to catalogue the gigantic amount of information on the internet, so that they can store it in a massive online warehouse and pull it out when someone is searching for it. These 'spiders' can only read though, they can't look at pretty pictures or watch cat videos on YouTube. This means that you have to make sure you are including relevant text in your posts, in your HTML and in your descriptions, because without it, the 'spiders' won't know how to catalogue your information in the giant internet warehouse.  

There are a few ways you can quickly and easily improve your SEO no matter if you're a blogger using Blogger or Wordpress or if you have an awesome website for your business. Here are a few basic things you can think about to get you started in the world of search engine optimisation. 

Name your images before uploading them. This is so important and easy to do. When you name your images on your computer, be sure to give them relevant names that correspond with your post or web page. You will often find images from blogs and websites on Google Images and they show up when you search because they've been named relevantly to what you're searching for. 

Target your keywords. I wrote a post all about finding your keywords and how to use them, which will help you to make a list of your blog or businesses keywords and phrases. You should use these in all of your posts, page descriptions, social media descriptions and in your image titles. It's also great if you can squeeze one or two into your page/post title. This will make sure the 'spiders' know what your page or post is all about. 

Use Title and ALT attributes in your HTML. You don't have to be a HTML wizard to do this, simply head to your HTML and find any links, tables or any structural elements and give it a title. It will usually look like this: <a class='Link' href='https://URLHERE.com' title='title of link'>

The title tag explains what the element is about, it's great for naming specific pages on websites and you'll see it a lot in the <head> section of your HTML. 

The ALT attribute is used for images, it helps catalogue images for those poor 'spiders' that can only read text. it comes inside the <img> tag before the last > e.g. <img src="http://URLHERE.com" alt="image for post">. You can make sure your blog images have these by going into your blog HTML. If you use blogger, you can do it by creating a new post/edit post and adding your image, switch to the HTML view in the post and add it to the image HTML.

Build your backlinks. Search engines love a good strong backlink and they can be tricky to get your hands on if you're relatively new to the game. The best way to get a few links under your belt as a new blogger or business, is through guest posting. Contact a handful of blogs you really love and feel like you could write a small post for and see if they would like to feature it. 

Another way is to make sure that you're posting amazing and helpful content that people actually want to link back to. This might sound extremely difficult at first but if you have patience it will be more rewarding than anything else you do.

You can of course pay for an ad space on other blogs, the only thing you will have to be wary of is if those links have a 'no-follow' attribute in the code. If the links on your ad space have 'no-follow' in them, then the link won't be counted as a back link. You can do a bit of code research to find this out by using Google Chrome web browser, going to view > Developer > View source and searching for your ad link.

Are you new to SEO? Are you putting some time aside to really focus on optimising your website for search engines?

Finding Keywords And How To Use Them

If you're starting to get serious about your blog or small business, you might want to delve a little further into SEO. Yes, for someone who isn't all that clued in on digital marketing, SEO looks like one of those scary, complicated abbreviations that only men and women in business suits throw about. In truth, it can be a little difficult to navigate, which is why it's always good to start with the basics. 

SEO simply means Search Engine Optimisation and one of the best ways to ensure search engines are noticing your blog or website, is by targeting specific keywords. Keywords are not the be all and end all however, SEO is a combination of many different things all working together to give a ranking. Understanding your keywords can help you understand where your competition lies and can also help to focus your business to a more niche audience. 

Google Keyword Planner

The best (and free) keyword tool you can use to do a spot of keyword research, is the Google Keyword Planner. The Google Keyword Planner searches for your chosen keywords and lets you know the average monthly searches for those keywords, the competition for those keywords and how much they cost if you were to run a PPC campaign. 

The best way to use the Google Keyword planner is to compile a list of keywords you want to target in you blog post or website page and find the ones with the highest average searches and the lowest competition. 

Keywords or Key Phrases?

If you are a small business or blog starting out with very low domain authority, it's usually better to target phrases rather than keywords. Unless you are targeting a very specific keyword, a key phrase can help to really focus your content and ensure it is reaching the people who are searching specifically for your type of content. For example, instead of targeting 'makeup' you could try and target 'cruelty free makeup' or 'makeup tips for 20 somethings'.

Targeting key phrases can help you to get your foot in the door of SEO. By targeting your niche, you have a better chance of building your sites authority, gaining quality back links and it will eventually allow you to be a competitor for some of the more popular keywords. 

Keyword Rich not 'Keyword Stuffing'

It can be very easy to get carried away with keywords, you want to include a healthy amount of keywords in your content and not 'stuff' your content in hopes of better rankings.

Here's what Google says about 'keyword stuffing':

"Keyword stuffing" refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate a site's ranking in Google search results. Often these keywords appear in a list or group, or out of context (not as natural prose). Filling pages with keywords or numbers results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site's ranking. 

Examples of keyword stuffing include:

• Lists of phone numbers without substantial added value
• Blocks of text listing cities and states a webpage is trying to rank for
• Repeating the same words or phrases so often that it sounds unnatural, for example:
  We sell custom cigar humidors. Our custom cigar humidors are handmade. If you’re thinking of buying a custom cigar humidor, please contact our custom cigar humidor specialists at custom.cigar.humidors@example.com.

Google does not take kindly to sites that value keywords over content, make sure you are writing around your keywords and not to purely 'promote' your keywords. 

Have you ever given a bit of thought to what your keywords and phrases are? Do you keep them in mind when writing your posts or website copy? Do you think about them when writing your 'about' profiles on your social media profiles?