Want Free Traffic from Google? Hereʼs How
Welcome! I think you’re new here – lemme give you the perfect place to start.
You’ll really LOVE The Health Coach Blogging post series. In it I go through the whole life cycle of a blog post
Want Free Traffic from Google? Hereʼs How
Do you want free traffic from Google and other search engines, but youʼre not sure
where to start? Most health coaches I talk to list free traffic and search engine
optimization (SEO) as a top priority for their business. They want their sites to be easily
found in the search engines. But they are often confused about what makes a site
“optimized” for the search engines, especially when it comes to WordPress blogs.
In this article, Iʼm going to give you some SEO basics, especially for health coaching
websites, that you can start using today. And donʼt worry. Iʼll keep the technical terms
and “geek speak” to a minimum and give lots of examples to help you follow along.
Even if you later decide not to do the SEO work yourself, this article will take a lot of the
mystery out about why your site is or isnʼt getting free traffic from Google, Bing, and
Yahoo.
Three Things You Need to Use SEO
1. A Website – includes traditional websites and blogs.
2. Keywords – what people type into a search engine when looking for something.
3. Backlinks – hyperlinks on someone elseʼs site that goes to your website.
To rank well in the search engines youʼll want to use the best keywords on the right
places on your website and get other sites to link to yours.
Strategy #1 – Choose the Right Keywords
Youʼll need to choose keywords so the search engines know what your site is about. To
get the best keywords for your business, youʼll want to do keyword research. Donʼt
guess or pick your keywords out of a dictionary because there can be a huge difference
in search volume and competition between two related keywords.
You want keywords that have a good number of people searching for the term in Google
each month. Thatʼs called search volume. But you also need to consider who you will
be competing against to rank on page one in the search engine results. Thatʼs called
your competition.
For example, take the two keywords “healthy Italian recipes” and “authentic Italian
recipes.” One gets 14,800 searches in Google a month and the other only 2,400.
Which one do you think gets the most searches? How profitable do you think it might
be to know the answer if this was your niche?
If youʼre wondering why I keep referring to Google, itʼs because they are the most used
search engine in the world and everyone in SEO uses their information and tools as a
foundation for keyword research.
A great place to start your keyword research is with a free tool called Google Keyword
Tool. This is where I go to get started with all my keyword research. Not only will you
get the search volume on keywords, but it also gives you a bar graphic indicator of how
tough the competition is. Ifyou need any help using this, look in the left sidebar for a
box labeled “Help”.
By the way, Google Keyword Tool is where I got the search volume numbers in the
above example and learned that “authentic Italian recipes” gets 14,800 searches a
month.
Strategy #2 – Use Keywords Strategically on Your Site
For most people, ranking in the search engines for certain keywords is a big mystery.
What they donʼt know is that you actually get to tell the search engines what words you
want to rank for. And Iʼm going to take some of the mystery out and explain it.
Once you have chosen the right keywords for your website, there are seven main areas
where you want to use those keywords on your webpages.
1. Webpage title
2. Meta description tag
3. The meta keyword tag
4. The H1 and H2 tag
5. The URL
6. Hyperlinks on your webpage
7. Webpage content
If you have a traditional HTML site, your webmaster will know where to insert the tags
and titles mentioned above into your HTML code. But for those of you using a
WordPress blog, no programming is needed. Read below for a shortcut.
Tips for WordPress Sites
If youʼre using a WordPress blog, then youʼll want to use a plugin called “All in One SEO
Pack.” This will allow you to set the title, description, and keywords tags for each blog
post and blog page – without any HTML programming. Cool, huh?
The reason some WordPress blog themes claim to be SEO optimized is because they
already include the All in One SEO Pack plugin (or one like it) with their theme. But you
can do the same thing with any WordPress theme.
Keep in mind that a WordPress blog isnʼt search engine optimized just because it has a
particular plugin. You have to remember to use it and optimize your individual posts and
pages in order to get the best results. Otherwise, itʼs like having a fancy car sitting in
your garage that you never drive.
Strategy #3 – Create Buzz and Backlinks
So far youʼve read about finding keywords and how to use them on your own site. But
Google looks for one more thing when deciding who to list in their top 10 search results.
And for the most free traffic, thatʼs your goal – to get listed in the top 10 results,
preferably at number 1, 2 or 3.
The search engines monitor the internet looking for whatʼs being talked about, which
sites are linking to others, and how much attention any one site is getting. Thatʼs buzz.
Generally, the more sites that have links to your site, the better for you. We call those
backlinks.
So how do you get the buzz and backlinks? There are entire courses and books on this
topic alone. But the basics are that you just need to get a few other sites talking about
you.
One of the easiest ways to get buzz is to make sure that all your published WordPress
pages and posts are going out through RSS feeds.
Next, get links back to your site from other sites. This would include social media
pages, article or video directories, business directories, other sites and blogs, etc. Local
business directories, like Yelp and Google Places, are a great place to start.
Summary
Getting free traffic from Google and other search engines doesnʼt have to be hard.
There are some simple, easy to follow strategies that can get you ranked on page one
search engine results, especially for keywords with 3-6 words in them. You donʼt need
to trick the search engines into noticing you. Rather, you just need to know what the
search engines look for and give it to them.
Using these same strategies, my webpages get indexed and ranked in Google in less
than one day – usually in just hours. And the sites I create typically get high rankings in
Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
Start using these easy SEO strategies on your own site today and see how they help
improve your ranking in the search engines and get free traffic.
For free instant access to more great tips and articles on how to get free traffic from
search engines for your health coaching business, visit http://www.KarenBrunet.com.
From Karen Brunet, online marketing consultant, where “Itʼs not just a website…Itʼs the
Mother Lode!”
