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How to Find an SEO Goldmine for Your Blog

Posted By Guest Blogger 20th of December 2012 Search Engine Optimization 0 Comments

This guest post is by Elena Vakhromova of Freemake.com.

We all know that search engines are a big piece of blog traffic cake. Unlike other traffic sources (subscriptions or social media), search engines bring visitors who are generally unfamiliar with your blog and have one definite goal: to get an answer or solve the problem with the help of your post.

So while your Facebook fans would rather go to check out your recent post on any abstract topic, visitors from Google & Co. are able to discover only the posts which are shown in search results for queries they enter.

Ideally, every new post should bring visitors from Google, Yahoo, Bing, and so on. However, an average blog has only a few pages ranking high in search results and bringing new visitors daily.

When we started the Freemake Blog in May 2012, we never thought that one post (written in 20 minutes, purely for fun) would bring us ~6K pageviews daily. To tell the truth, we did nothing extraordinary to optimize this post. It just appeared when it was high demand for “funny questions to Siri” and there were almost no posts on this topic.

When we realized how fertile search traffic can be, we tried to write every new post aiming at the same result. And some of our initiatives have been successful.

Of course, it doesn’t mean that we write solely SEO-oriented posts, by no means. We understand that there should be a sound balance between SEO goals and common sense. So we never practiced keyword stuffing, but tried to find the topics which would be interesting to our readers and bring us traffic from search engines.

Here I’d like to share with you an approach that may help you find an SEO goldmine for your own blog.

Step 1. Look for standout ideas

Imagine that you’re going to write a potential SEO-boosting post and you face the problem of topic choice. First, you need to make up a list of all possible topics for the blog that you’re able to cover. There are several places where you can find ideas for new posts:

  • Q&A sites: Look for topics on popular Q&A sites (Yahoo! Answers, Quora, Mahalo, etc.). Go through all questions in your category.
  • News and trends: Your readers’ attention revolves around popular events in the world and your niche, so why not take advantage of upcoming releases, holidays, and rumors?
  • Comments & suggestions: Your visitors may suggest great ideas for new posts. If you don’t have a “Tip us off” page or at least a dedicated email address, it’s high time to think about it.
  • Competitors: Have a look at popular posts on competing blogs. If they don’t have such a section, you may check top search queries for that site in Alexa.
  • Social media: Visit your Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest accounts and see what your friends and followers are sharing. Some of their ideas may be worth your attention.

Write down all interesting ideas. Then look though the list and cross out those for which you don’t have enough expertise.

Step 2. Forecast organic traffic

You outlined several ideas for a new post. Now let’s check their potential popularity in search engines.

For each idea write three or four possible keywords and compare them using the Google Keyword Tool. This lets you measure the levels of traffic the keywords would bring to your blog if you optimized a new post for them. Put down the rates of global and local monthly searches for each keyword.

The Keyword Tool will also help you identify more worthy keywords to concentrate on. You may also use:

  • Google Trends to compare the volume of searches between two or more terms
  • Google search suggestions and related searches to get more keyword ideas. Just start typing a query and look at the Google auto-suggestions. Then click Search and look for the related searches at the bottom of results.

google_suggestions

At the end of this process, you should have on your list only the ideas with high keyword traffic potential.

Step 3. Find free SEO niches

Once you’ve decided on the keywords, analyze your possible competitors to find a free niche. This tactic especially makes sense for small and medium-sized blogs that don’t have enough authority to compete with big ones for high search engine rankings.

Enter the keywords you picked up in Step 2 and look at the first page of search results. It’s worth trying to compete if, on the first search results page, you see user-generated content (e.g. forum questions, self-created tutorials, YouTube videos, and so on), or posts from blogs whose PageRank and Alexa Rank are poorer than yours.

On the other hand, if large authoritative blogs like TechCrunch, Mashable, or Engadget have already written on the topic you’ve chosen, and the first search results page has no “ray of light”, you’d better think of a different approach to this topic (e.g. a negative or funny one), look for another vacant query, or quit this idea.

Step 4. Pick the winners

So you have filtered your ideas by keyword popularity and competition. Now it’s time to identify the leaders. You shouldn’t always pick up only one topic—maybe several of them deserve to become a new post, or one idea may lead to several articles with different keywords. So let’s prioritize the ideas on this basis.

First, take the topics which are tied to upcoming events or rising trends, and publish the post at least two weeks prior to the event.

Then, give preference to evergreen topics which you’ll be able to update with new information.

Finally, pick up those which seem best suited to your blog content.

Step 5. Write a quality article

When writing a post on the topic you selected, remember that SEO aims shouldn’t affect the post quality. Don’t overburden the post with keywords. Keep in mind: readers who visit your post and don’t find any worthy content won’t come back to your blog again.

To decide which format better suits your new post, analyze your previous articles that gained high social engagement (tweets, likes, comments). What format, length, and headline peculiarities do they have? Don’t be afraid to repeat your successful experiments.

Consider providing useful calls to action and giving additional materials: links to particular tools, related articles, illustrative charts, images, and videos. Don’t write too floridly. Your readers are simple internet users, like you and me. So make every effort to provide a really interesting article.

Step 6. Reanimate SEO-unfriendly posts

As a bonus, I’d like to suggest reconsidering old posts which should be bringing visitors from search engines, but for whatever reason, aren’t. You may easily find such articles in your blog analytics: their keywords don’t bring much traffic as compared to your SEO-leaders.

No doubt, the reasons for this may differ from post to post—from technical or design oversights to high keyword competition. I’d like to draw your attention to the SEO drawbacks that you may eliminate in shortest time:

  • The keywords you chose are unpopular. In this case, examine Keyword Tool ideas to find better keyword combinations (go to Step 2 above).
    keyword_toolFor example, I see that our blog has a keyword funniest youtube channels which brought us about 150 visitors last month. Our post comes second in search results on this query. We consider the keyword unpopular—it has only 720 global monthly searches. Still the tool suggests to me the related search terms top youtubers, funny youtube channels, and best youtube channels.

    It’s clear that top youtubers isn’t what the post is exactly about, but a simple change from funniest to funny youtube channels might triple the clickthroughs to this post.

    • Your post doesn’t look attractive in search results, so people don’t click it. A skillfully written title and description will improve the situation.
    • The post doesn’t match the keywords for which it’s appearing.Short visit durations and high bounce rates are strong signs of this problem. Therefore, think thoroughly about what people expect to see when they enter a particular search query. What is their aim?For instance, imagine that you look for a good youtube converter and instead of a direct link to some converter, you see the analysis of how to choose a good YouTube converter. You may scroll the tips and even follow them one day, but your goal isn’t achieved, you haven’t received what you were looking for. So the post needs re-writing (keep in mind Step 5).

    Find your SEO goldmine

    Whether new or old, as long as it’s optimized for “right” search queries and written primarily for readers, your post has all chances to become a traffic goldmine.

    However, search engines are unpredictable mechanisms, so who knows how another algorithm update will impact on your search traffic?

    What steps do you work through to make sure your posts are optimized for the right search terms? Tell us your tips in the comments.

    Elena Vakhromova is a full-time PR manager and blogger at Freemake.com, developer of free Windows software for audio/video conversion and YouTube MP3 download.

About Guest Blogger
This post was written by a guest contributor. Please see their details in the post above.
Comments
  1. Wow this is a really good how-to guide Elena thanks for sharing I’m bookmarking this post.

    I especially like:
    Step 2. Forecast organic traffic

    I was able to test this earlier this year with my post on “Why Romney Lost” that I published before the election.

    For a number of days I was getting good traffic from this post from Google until after the election when everyone was writing about why Romney lost.

    Search traffic can be a gold mine it’s also fickle and trendy so you have to stay on your toes. This post definitely shows you how to do it, thanks.

    • I really like the #2 step and #6 step. Forecasting organic traffic will certainly leverages your traffic, coz of less competition as illustrated by Darnell in his example. The #6 step is truly a handy guide for differentiating between a good anchor-text use and vice-versa. Thanks for this informative post.

  2. It’s funny how a post that we weren’t intending to get a lot of traffic actually produces the opposite. Every October I write paranormal and other weird topics all month long. The funny thing is that these posts gets me the most traffic to my blog. One post had already gotten me over 30K visitors in around a years time.

  3. Those are great strategies Elena and I agree with you that a skillfully written headline that can grab people’s attention gets more clicks from search results.

    I don’t see that much monthly searches on Google with funny questions to Siri keyword and I’m impressed to know that you’re getting 6K pageviews daily for that keyword.

  4. Elena…Excellent SEO advice and strategies. Recently, I have been extremely focused on taking steps to optimize for organic search traffic by spending some significant time on engineering my WordPress themes properly for SEO (mostly by structural organization and clean markup) and utilizing a strong SEO plugin for the content. This is a lot of work indeed, but well worth the time in the long run!

  5. Its always good to read some SEO tips for blogs. I’m thinking about starting something new in 2013 so these tips will be useful, thanks!

  6. Such a good post! Just what I was looking for. I can always rely on you guys to shake out what is in my head and present me with solutions! Thank you :)

  7. This post is so helpful, it will help me lot.Good to hear 6k views daily, this shows the power of seo.Thank you for sharing great post.

  8. This is an excellent article Elena! I’ve been using SEMRush’s free version in addition to Google’s Keyword Tool. I find they both help in choosing keywords.

    Any tips on getting from number 2 or 3 up to number 1? We rank well for some big keywords, but often only in spot 2 or 3. I want to push those to number 1!

    Thanks for the article :)

  9. No Words… Really this post sealed my mouth :) In my Opinion this Post is not about finding goldmine instead it is Goldmine for all bloggers. You have told almost all secrets and most beneficial tips for SEO to make a blog/website top on Google. No more words. Thanks a ton.

  10. Hi Elena,

    I find your suggestions on how to Look for standout ideas as very helpful. Looking through Q & A sites is actually a good start! I would have never thought of it. :-)

    Also, indeed, things are easier for you when you ask the readers themselves on which topics to tap. At the same time, this just might help you get their current preoccupations, interests and whatnots.

    Thanks,
    Miranda

  11. I like your tips about revisiting, revising, and learning from older posts. I’ve come to find with my blog that while keyword searches don’t match my blog specifically, I have several posts on a topic (colorism) that many other sites only write about once or twice. So I beat tough competitors by having many more posts on a topic than they do. And of course, taking a different spin on it each time, which I’m able to do because I write about it frequently, whereas bigger blogs rehash the same old stuff because they’re not going as in depth on the issue.

    But I have noticed an improvement on my blog since I started getting serious about SEO. I hope to find a gold mine as you did!

    Best

  12. My family all the time say that I am wasting my time here at web, however I know I am getting experience everyday by reading thes good articles or reviews.

  13. Thanks for an insightful post. It does take a lot of getting used to when trying to optimize one’s blog. I often look to Google trends to see what people are searching for as well so that I can try and ensure some people will be able to stumble across my blog. It takes a lot of getting used to as it’s not quite the same as optimizing a website.I find that optimizing for blogs means I focus on longer tailed keywords rather than shorter ones. It all depends on the point I am trying to get across on the blog post too. Thanks again for sharing this was very helpful.

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