How to Make Friends With Search Engines

by Joy Victory, Editorial Czar WordPress.com

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Look at your stats oftenDon't be stat-phobic, take the time to understand the terminology and graphs. Always have a sense of how you're traffic is doing.

Who is coming to your site and from what sources? When? If you're not already, get a sense of how your traffic does from:

    *Facebook/Twitter, social media    *Other blogs    *RSS readers/email    *Search engines* *

**Don't sweat this too much. Just learning the basic concepts is enough (but you can certainly find a world of information on this topic online if you find it interesting). 

Learn to track trendsDo some keyword research to see what trends are popular in your topic area. Consider writing blog posts occasionally based around these trends. Google Insights shows you nifty things like "rising trends." 

For example, you're a vegetarian blogger, and you've got a fresh batch of corn and want to do a corn-related post. What's the best way to write about it online?

Let the Tool Help YouFrom the list of rising trends, you determine "corn chowder" is something you'd like to write about from this list. But you want to put your own spin on it -- that's a good idea. Makes your voice unique while also capitalizing on "rising searches." 

For any topic (trendy or not), write with keywords in mind.Each time you write a new post or web page, ask yourself: What is this about? What are the core words that describe my content?

"I went to the farmer's market yesterday and bought some corn. I decided to make corn chowder - but with a twist! I added some chipotles to spice it up. Here is my chipotle corn chowder  recipe:"

Keywords are?

...The keywords are

Chipotle Corn Chowder Recipe

Seems too specific? Nope. Specific is good for search engines:

• "Corn" -- too broad, very competitive term (70 million pages related to this term)

• "Corn chowder" -- again, pretty competitive• "Corn chowder recipe" -- just as competitive• "Chipotle corn chowder recipe" -- unique, new, stands better

chance of getting ranked (just 44,000 related pages). 

Where to use keywordsIn your URL In your blog title - Very important

• Bad Title: My New Soup Creation! (vague) 

• A Bit Better: Try This Corn Chowder Recipe I Made! (less vague)

• Best Title: Chipotle Corn Chowder Recipe Spices Things Up (specific and fun to read -- helps search engine "know" what the post is about)

Other places to use keywords

• In the first sentence of your post: "Feeling inspired by my recent visit to Mexico, I decided to kick it up a notch and try out a batch of chipotle corn chowder."

• In sub-titles "Ingredients for Chipotle Corn Chowder"

• In photo captions "Danny slurping up his chipotle corn chowder."

• In any links you create to the post. Ex: You Tweet about your post: Chipotle Corn Chowder Recipe http://joyv-recipe1

The trick is to not leave any doubt about what your post is about without beating it over you readers' heads by over-using it. You have to find a nice balance.

Other things to keep in mind

If you consistenly do this on a lot of pages/posts, you'll start to see search engine traffic increasing

SEO also improves when you:

• update often -- the more content you have, the more you have out there floating in search engines

• have ingoing/outgoing links -- this helps pull the page into the web and out of a vacuum of loneliness

• along with new trends, write about upcoming tried-and-true trends -- Cinco de Mayo margaritas. 

Gracias!

Joy Victorythejoyvictory.comeditor.wordpress.com@thejoyvictory