What’s the fastest way to make money blogging?
It is increasing your traffic from Google.
If you are getting massive traffic from search engines, you will have unlimited ways to turn that traffic into money. You can use AdSense, affiliate marketing, product reviews, banner ads and a ton more ways to make money from that traffic.
But the problem is 90% of bloggers quit because they struggle to increase their search traffic.
If you are also one among them and if you want to become an SEO expert starting from scratch, this article will guide you in the right direction.
Are you curious to know how to become an SEO expert? Let’s dive into the details.
Get better at keyword research
Keyword research is probably the fastest way for you to master the art of SEO. If you get better at finding profitable keywords, not only you can increase your traffic but also sales.
Capitalize on long tail keywords. If you are going to learn keyword research, target long tail keywords.
Long tail keywords usually contain more than 5 keywords and they quickly send you more traffic because they are less competitive.
So how can you find better long tail keywords?
The fastest way is to use incredible tools like Long Tail Pro or SEMrush. They have a large volume of databases that give you access to highly profitable yet low competitive keywords.
If you are wondering how to do keyword research with SEMrush and want to know a case study where I improved my website search traffic by getting over 5000 extra visitors just within 30 days, you should read this case study.
That being said, here are few quick tips on finding great and highly potential long tail keywords.
- Make sure to find long tail keywords with the monthly search volume below 2000 so you can easily rank in the first page results.
- Find user informative and commercial intent keywords so you can both increase your search traffic and website sales.
- Spy on your competitors best performing keywords. Find out which keywords are driving them more traffic. Try to use them by creating engaging content around it.
- Use your primary keywords within your content by properly doing on page optimization which you are going to cover in the same article.
- Instead of finding and using 2 to 3 word combination long tail keywords (ex: best men shoe), you can rank really better if you use 4 or 5 word combination long tail keywords (ex: best men shoe in India). It's also increases your chances of making more sales from your sites.
Get better at site audit
Becoming an SEO expert depends on one major things: how fast you can identify the problems that are causing a site’s search engine traffic.
The quicker you identify and fix those website SEO related issues the better results and sales you will get. So auditing your websites is a must if you want to be an SEO expert.
How can you audit your websites to improve your SEO then?
There are a lot of website tools like Seoptimer, My Site Auditor, SEO site checkup etc to help you easily do free SEO audit of your sites. By using those tools you can quickly find all the SEO related issues that your site may have.
So once you find those errors (generally dead links, missing title tags, description etc), fix them and you will see better search results for your sites within a few weeks. That's the beauty of conducting frequent SEO audits of your sites. They can help you quickly find and fix all your site issues so you can improve better search rankings and traffic.
Backlinks are golden
One of the best SEO experts in the world Matt Cutts says “make your backlinks natural, don’t make them look natural”.
What he meant was, don’t try to build backlinks just for the sake of getting better search results. Instead focus on creating better content that naturally attracts incoming links from other sources (blogs, websites, forums, social media sites etc).
That’s how you get stunning results from Google. We all know Google is getting smarter day by day. The only way to get more out of it is to focus on your target audience. Serve the best content that you can come up with and optimize properly for search engines.
That being said, here are few effective ways to naturally attract more backlinks to your sites.
- Link out to other bloggers. The first step to getting incoming links is to linking out. Link out to other relevant blog posts in your industry. And let them know once you link to them. By doing it frequently, not only you are building strong relationships but they will also link to your stuff if they find your content valuable.
- Interlinking is another key strategy. Most new bloggers rarely link to their inner pages. If you are also one among them, stop it and start interlinking to your posts. Search crawlers will deeply crawl your sites and give more weightage your inner pages whenever you do so.
- Write evergreen content. Make sure your posts are top notch and highly informative. Create your content so great that if someone reads it, they should think about sharing or linking to it.
- Do blogger outreach. Frequently conduct interviews with other bloggers. Building relationships and email them about your epic posts. And ask them to link to your posts. If they really find value in your content, they will gladly do so. This strategy alone works like a charm almost every single time.
- Make sure to submit your new posts on across all the social media sites and blog directories. You can use Triberr, Indiblogger, Blog Engage, Blokube, Just Retweet etc. sites to promote and get some good links to your sites.
- Consider creating videos about your most popular posts. You can create videos explaining your blog posts or tutorials and upload them on YouTube. Make sure to include links to your original blog posts from your videos description and they really can help you boost your overall search rankings.
Get better at on-page optimization
When it comes to becoming really good at SEO, you need to get better at on page optimization. On page SEO helps you increase your search rankings for specific keywords.
On page SEO is all about optimizing your web pages properly for the search engines so they can give you better rankings in search results.
Basically on page optimization includes the following things. If you properly use them, you will get better at it really quickly.
- Page titles: Your page title or blog post headline is your #1 way of getting top page search results on Google for your targeted keywords. So make sure to include your main keyword in it to rank well. If possible, include your primary keyword at the beginning of your title.
- Meta description: Meta description is what shows up at Google search results along with your page title. Include your primary keyword along with other relevant keyword to it in your meta description and you will get better rankings.
- Your URL: Search engine friendly URL’s and short URL always work like a charm. Instead of using a long and vague page URL, shorten your URL with your primary keyword in it.
- Image alt tags: Even Google image search results can send you a lot of traffic. So make sure you are using your primary keyword in your blog post images. And don’t publish a post or page without having at least one image in it. Images are always better to grabbing more attention and search traffic.
- Keyword density: Most SEO experts say that you can rank better for your keywords if you maintain your keyword density between 1 to 3%. That means using your primary keyword at least once in every 100 to 300 words. So give it a try once and check if you are getting any better results. Don’t keyword stuff though but make sure you are using relevant keywords to rank well in Google search results.
- Meta tags: Meta tags also play a vital role in on page optimization. Using 3 to 4 meta tags for each article can be really helpful. Using a powerful on page optimization plugin like WordPress SEO by Yoast can really help you easily optimize your blog posts and pages.
Important note: Before you do on-page SEO, make sure to first come up with a primary keyword (ex: best SEO tips) so you can easily mention in the above mentioned places to rank well for that particular keyword.
If you can master the on page optimization, you will be well ahead of your competitors in terms of bringing more traffic to your sites from search engines.
Keep your both eyes on Google's latest algorithm update
Did you know that Google makes over 500 changes every single year? With each algorithm update (minor or major), your site rankings get affected.
With the major Google updates like Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird etc you will see a huge impact in your site’s search rankings. If you are doing great in terms of SEO, you will get better rankings or otherwise your site gets penalized. It’s as simple as that.
So keeping Google latest updates in mind, you can quickly act on all the site changes (if they get affected). Moz keeps track of majority of the Google’s latest algorithm changes so it’s better to frequently keep your eyes on their page to get updated information.
One important factor you need to remember here is Google is frequently giving a lot of importance to the sites that are mobile friendly and penalizing the sites that are not mobile responsive.
So if you want better search results either for your own sites or your client sites, make sure they are mobile responsive.
Final thoughts on becoming an SEO expert
Becoming an SEO expert shouldn’t be your quickest goal. You can’t become an expert in any field within a year or two. It takes a lot of time especially when it’s related to SEO.
So focus on long term results and you will get the best rewards by conquering the topics one after the other. SEO is also about building strong relationships with other bloggers and marketers in your industry. Also make sure you are using a powerful hosting to make your site run fast, after all site speed matter a lot in SEO.
If you approach SEO that way, driving more search engine traffic and sales to your sites won’t be a big deal for you. Fortunately there are a ton of useful SEO resources out there (like Moz, Backlinko, Search Engine Watch etc.) to quickly learn SEO.
So what do you think about this post? Did you find it helpful? If yes, please share it with others so they can benefit. Also let me know your thoughts about becoming an SEO expert in the comments below.
