So many times, I will be writing about something and I will mention a past post in that post, hoping to help my readers as well as increase my page views (in turn, hoping to have new followers to inspire, help, etc…)   I never use the words CLICK HERE when adding a link because those words are not SEO friendly.

What does this mean?

The more that when you use the words from your post, with a link, it puts you higher in the rank.   You read about why it is important to have links back to your page, well this is equally important, because you are doing the same thing when you link to other posts.

SO, example:  If you wrote about a Fun Free activities for kids,  you would want to write out those words and then link to it, using those keywords (like I just did).

Now, when google sees my words with a link to my Fun Free activities for kids,  it is going to say “OK- when someone searches Fun Free activities for kids, I will show them this page because it has a lot of links back to it”.

BUT….  If you write these words… “for my Fun Free Activities for Kids, click here“ you are not linking to your focus words.
Now instead of highlighting the words that you want to be found, you are highlighting the word HERE.   You are not doing your blog any justice by doing this.

To make it easier, sometimes I will write: CLICK HERE:  fun free activities for kids.

This way they know to click on the link that follows the word here, but it is just as easy for them and gives me the SEO benefits because I am highlighting my focus words (usually the same as the title of the post).

I hope that was helpful!  These little tips in our Blogging 101 series will hopefully help you to have even more blogging traffic!

Ps- Did you see why I never put an image first?

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We recently posted about how to hit 1 million visitors on your blog and I hope that it gave you some really great tips to grow your blog.  Today I wanted to share some topics to get you started.  These topics to make a post go viral will assist you if you want to achieve this goal.

Here are some topics to make a post go viral and to help inspire you each month:   You can download a GO VIRAL CALENDAR for free here. 

• JANUARY- organizing.  My organizing posts are bringing in a lot of my 7,000 page views to my blog, every day this month.   It is a new year’s resolution for many- getting organized!
  Also- football food is big this month, with the super bowl being so close.  Party planning, food ideas, etc… are all going to be highly viewed this month.
• FEBRUARY: Valentines Day (kids party ideas, dating ideas, dinner recipes for dinner for two).  Also weight loss- we are in full swing now that the holidays are over.

• MARCH:  St. patricks day ideas.  ( My kid craft ideas are a hit for holidays).    Spring decor is starting back, so add a few DIY spring things!
• APRIL:  EASTER and Gardening.  My “How to feed a family with a garden” post was very popular in the springtime last year.
• MAY:  SUMMER ideas.    Vacation tips or ideas of where to go.  Activities to do with your kids over the summer.  You want to stay ahead of the game, so you are about a month ahead and this is perfect.
• JUNE: Weddings and Picnics.   Both of these topics are big.  (With both of them, food ideas are huge.  Remember 4th of July is just a month away so start planning for that picnic/party!)
•  JULY:  School ideas are big now.  Organizing for school, shopping for school, etc… Parents are ready to start getting back into the swing of things.  They are thinking of back to school shopping.
•  AUGUST:  Back to school.  Daily calendars.  Bedtime and morning routine posts, as parents get back into the schedule of a school year.
• SEPTEMBER:  foods.  I find that comfort foods are huge this month.   We are thinking of getting back into our routines and family meals, etc…  Post some great family recipes that are easy & comforting.  (make the pictures very pin-worthy!)  Halloween ideas – share them now, a month early

• OCTOBER:  Halloween ideas (party foods are big this month- try to think outside of the box for Halloween party foods).   Thanksgiving recipes.   Fighting illnesses (colds are coming back & flu season is beginning)
•  NOVEMBER: Christmas ideas!  My Christmas posts were huge in November.  I tried to do one a week, at least.

• DECEMBER: More Christmas (recipes, cookies, gifts, decor…) & start talking about New Years Resolutions.

These topics are just ideas to get the ball rolling.  See how they do on your blog.   If they do well, spin off of them with a “Part Two” or a series.  You can really help to increase your page views and your visitors every month.

What post did you have that went viral (share a link!)?   Did you find that your traffic stayed?  Did you feel like it went viral when you thought that it wood?

Remember you can download your VIRAL calendar right here, for free. 

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Are you wondering how Google sees your blog?   Why SEO is so important for Google?   Well, no one likes to blog to an empty room.  Beyond your social media platforms and our amazing e-mail newsletters, your biggest source of readers will come from search engines, specifically Google. While, search engine optimization (SEO) is a huge topic one of the quickest things you can do to help Google offer your pages in search is to understand how Googlebots, Google’s little virtual minions, read your page.

All those painstakingly edited photos? Useless. Carefully considered font combinations? Google could care less. That expensive or hair pullingly coded JavaScript picture slider added to your blog? Googlebots don’t even register them as they wander past.

What Google Can See

Text and various HTML elements.  That’s about it.

If you use Blogger, then your post interface does a good job of only giving you the important items for your blog: Title, Headings, Subheadings and Text. WordPress .com will throw a lot more options at you:  Six headings, Categories, Asides, etc.

Self-hosted WordPress can quickly get crazy with a few plugins and you find yourself are dealing with meta-descriptions, keywords, post slugs and… oh my goodness… who has time to fill all that in?

Guess what?  You don’t need to!

What Google Will Focus On

1. Blog Title: Your blog needs a title (found under settings).  The title shows in the tabs of a web browser, is picked up by RSS readers, and is used when people search for your blog by name.
2. Post Titles: I like a catchy title, but honestly, Google wants a descriptive title. †Focus on using words that describe the post.
3. Headings: If you are using WordPress the heading numbers correlate directly to HTML. Best way to think of them as headings and subheadings. They are meant to tell Google and human readers what is important and break up your post. They are NOT meant to be used to make text bigger or give emphasis to a word.
4. Text: Specifically the first 150 or so words.  (This is why you shouldn’t put your image first…read more on that here) That long preamble or conversation at the beginning of your post? Google does not care if you are friendly, it wants to delve into the meat of your article. Try to summarize your post or use keywords in those first few sentences. Google will often but not always, use them as the excerpt for the search.
5. ALT text*: You know all those pretty pictures that Google cannot see? Well ALT text solves this for you. Write a short (sentence at most) description of what that image is all about. This helps index the picture in Google’s image search, allows Google to read the image, and gives users an idea of what your picture is if they cannot view the actual image.

*ALT text is the one thing Blogger is a pain about. You have to put the image in your post then click and add the alt text under properties.  Wordpress allows you to add alt text when you upload the image.

In Conclusion

All the pretty layouts, images, and clever writing are what keeps readers coming back to your blog but it is important to give thought about how people can find you. Take a moment to look at your blog. Do your social media icons have alt text? What about your menu buttons? Are you using descriptive titles and making your first paragraph really count? These are your first steps in making each post Google-Friendly. Make changes and the next time Google sweeps your blog you will be ready for it to showcase your posts.

Brianna Willis works in information technology (IT) by day and craft blogging by late night. All other hours are devoted to her two small sons, family, and laundry. You can read more about her at, Craft Thyme, her blog that focuses on step by step seasonal craft tutorials and displays.

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Did you ever notice that it seems that Google may be avoiding your blog?   Its true!  You want to get noticed by Google, not be avoided, right?

Have you ever looked at your stats and wondered why you are not getting much traffic from search engines, or your traffic is sporadic at best?

These simple things that you could be doing, will have google avoiding your blog like the plague!   I was doing a few things wrong, but once I fixed them, I found that Google went from being not even in my top 10 of referring traffic… to in my top three!

Wondering what makes search engines avoid your blog? Here are a few places to start:

1. Duplicate Content –
   Search engines are always on the look out for duplicate content because there are so many “scraper” sites out there.People who put websites up and, instead of coming up with their own ideas and thoughts, they just steal the work of others. Google (and other search engines) send out little spiders that crawl through sites and check for this. Since these are bots, and not people, even if you are re-using a post with permission, the little bots won’t know that.One or two duplicate posts might not be an issue, but you certainly don’t want to make a habit of it. If you allow guest posts on your site, make sure that you are receiving an exclusive piece, and not something that has already been done on their blog or some one else’s.  I always ask this ahead of time (“Is this being used anywhere else on the web?”)  It could be damaging for both blogs if you are running the same piece, so it’s in every one’s best interest to keep content new and exclusive!If you guest post somewhere, instead of sharing the entire post on your site, you could consider sharing a “teaser”, with a few sentences about your post, and then direct your readers to the site where you are posting that day. It’s a great way to still be able to share your guest content with your readers, without jeaprodizing your relationship with the search engines.
2. Selling Links
    This is also a big no-no, and one that is not talked about enough! From time to time you might be contacted by a company wanting you to add their link to one of your posts in exchange for money. While this might seem like easy money, you need to be cautious, because this practice goes against google’s terms of service.Simply because it creates a poor experience for the user (the search-er) if sites are showing up high in search rankings because they have paid to be there, instead of earning their spot by having quality content. This is why it is so important to use the “nofollow” code when putting links in your sponsored posts.This tells google’s bots not to pay attention to that link or rank the site any higher in searches because of it. Here’s a great article from google about how “nofollow” works, if you need some help there. Keep in mind, you are still able to link to other sites within your posts. These links should just be natural in your writing, and not something that you are being paid to do. It’s perfectly fine to link out from your blog, it is typically just frowned upon when you are doing it for profit instead of to provide a positive experience for your readers.
3. Allowing Spam Comments
   Although you are not the one writing them, allowing spam comments to be published on your blog (and remain there) can also negatively affect your standings with the search engines.A lot of comments are clearly spam, but also be on the lookout for comments from real people that are spam-y. Lots of commenters are “link droppers” and just ask you to visit one or more of their blogs, without adding any real content to the conversation about your post. This can also be counted as spam, so you may not want to allow them to be posted.
4. Dead Links – Linking out to pages that no longer exist is another big one. It’s important to make sure that pages on your site, and pages that you link to lead to helpful pages and not a dead “error” page.Search engine bots look at these things as well and your site will be seen as lower quality if it consistently pulls up pages that do not exist (because you deleted them) or links out to things that are no longer there.

If you have been doing any of these things, the good news is, that they are pretty easy to fix!
Example:  If you have posts that were duplicates of guest-posts, just convert them to teaser posts so that they won’t be dead links, etc… 

Were you making any of these mistakes? How can you go about fixing them?

MORE POSTS YOU MIGHT LIKE:

Or check out our book 

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I wanted to give you a little Blogging 101 lesson because a lot of people are asking about plugins for SEO.    If you are wondering how to use SEO plugin in wordpress – this will help you.

There are a few to choose from, but I have personally found that YOAST seems to be the easiest to use.  It gives me a “green light” when it is ready to go.   I love that because I am a visual person.

I use it on Your Modern Family & on here.  I really like it because it lets you see how well you are doing.   SEO is important to rank you higher in search engines, etc…

So, how do you use the SEO plugin in wordpress?  
You can see in this screenshot that right now my SEO plugin is not activated because it is gray. (The SEO indicator is on the right hand side, under PUBLICIZE:    See the little button next to SEO?   It will be green when this post is completed.)

Now when I take my focus keyword (the title: how to use an SEO plugin )  and I put it into my plugin, it will be activated.

What that means is that I add it to 6 different places:

• The Title
• URL
• Image
• Focus Keyword
• SEO title
• meta description

When adding it to your URL, you can just use a little part of it, like even a word or two, instead of the whole thing.

I always have it in every picture.  Here is my screenshot so that you can see what I mean after I upload an image:

This is an easy way to boost your SEO and your search traffic.

You also have to make sure that you have enough words to turn the SEO plugin green.  I aim for 250 words for each post.    (you can see the word count in this screenshot)

And when my post is done, here is the new SEO score: 
Here is a screenshot to show you what I mean:

NOW BE SURE TO DO THE SOCIAL PART!!
You may have seen on Business2Blogger where they showed everyone how to make a Facebook image so that when you link is shared on Facebook, it is the perfect picture.

I do this all in the SEO plugin, as well: 

After they taught us this, my posts have all been looking so much better!  I try to go back and update old images as often as I can.

After you do this, GO TO FACEBOOK DEBUGGER and enter your post.
To use the debugger:
1- Add your URL to the page and hit DEBUG
2- hit the button that says SCRAPE NEW CONENT and scroll down to see if it works (there will be many errors- ignore that part for now).
3- Hit the button AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN until it grabs your new image.   If you hit it too many times, it will just tell you that you have exceeded the number of clicks, but that doesn’t normally happen.

That’s it!
For more advice, check out our book!

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I wanted to share a little blogging tip that I learned almost a year ago and it deals with the reason that I don’t put an image before words in a blog post.  (I just did another trick right there that I will explain today, too- #2 below).  I always add a little intro first and then the image (find out why you don’t put an image before words in a blog post below…)

1- The reason that you don’t but your image before words is because when the ‘bots’ read your page, they will be reading coding instead of your words. If your image is first, it will have so many letters, codes, etc… instead of your focus Keyword. (ps- if you don’t have an SEO plugin, get one. I explain why it is important and how to use it here: SEO PLUGIN).

What is a focus keyword?  Read about it in the link that I shared above for SEO plugins, but it is the keyword(s) that people will be searching that will lead them to you.  So, this post would be PUT AN IMAGE BEFORE WORDS IN A BLOG POST.   When people search that, this post will eventually be listed high on the search page and people will find it, read it, and hopefully become followers.

2- So, you want to make sure that you have your focus keyword(s) first and it has to be in the first 100 characters to make your SEO better. I also bold my focus keyword. Bold letters tell the the ‘bots that it is important!

3- You can’t just use your focus keyword without other words around it. The ‘bots can tell.  So, I didn’t write “put an image before words in a blog post” right away. I wrote a long sentence & just included it, casually, but it is within the first 100 words.  (See my intro above to see what I mean)

4- Make sure that your images have your focus keyword in there, too.    Here is an example from my post on Monday.  My focus keywords were HOW TO USE SEO PLUGINS IN WORDPRESS

Here is the example from today’s post:

All of these things will make you rank higher on searches, etc…

I hope that was helpful!

Find out how to make an Income blogging here  (& view my blogging income report here)

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