Building Traffic using SEO

The term SEO is one that you will hear A LOT this semester. Make yourself familiar with it and learn how to use it. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. I had a lot of trouble with traffic the first couple of months. After I learned about SEO, I implimented all of the following tips and my traffic skyrocketed. I even got some hits in Europe and Asia! So, here are some tips I recommend you use to increase traffic.

1. Use Google hot trends: Google Hot Trends gives you a list of the top 100 words currently being searched for using Google search engine. For example, my blog was on graduation. I used Google Hot Trends and found that graduation gifts was commonly searched for. I made a post on graduation gifts and I got comments from people not in class. It definately increased my traffic.

2. Use Google Keywords Tool: Google Keyword Tool is helpful in telling you what your competition is doing. You can find out they are posting about and then make posts on the same subjects. You can even link to them! Back to my example about boats. If someone else has a blog and Google Keywords tells me they are blogging about sunburn, I should write a post about how to prevent sunburn and link back to their post for more tips and information, thus increasing traffic.

3. Use Google Webmaster Tool: According to Google, Google's free webmaster tools provide you with an easy way to make your site more Google-friendly. They can show you Google's view of your site, help you diagnose problems, and let you share info with us to help improve your site's visibility in our search results. When I used it for my blog this semester, it helped me because it told me that one of my URLs was unreachable. That allowed me to go back and fix my problem.

4. Use Negative Keywords: Negative keywords help to target a more specific audience. For example if your blog is on a writer named Tom Bobama, but you don’t want people searching for Barack Obama being directed to your site, then you can use Barack Obama as a negative keyword. You can do this with the help of websites or by adjusting the html of your specific blog by customizing the settings. If you are using Blogger, it is easy to edit your HTML. For more help on using negative keywords visit WebmasterWorld.