The Basics of Generating Search Engine Traffic to Your Blog

You've created your blog, added some great content and now you want to start generating traffic to your blog. So, how do you get traffic to your new blog? Well, first you need to figure out what kind of traffic you want to generate. Do you want to generate social traffic or do you want to tackle the more advanced search engine traffic (or possibly both). If you want to generate search engine traffic (SEO), you need to start by learning the basics. Learning the basics of SEO isn't difficult; however, it is time consuming. You can, of course, outsource a lot of this but even if you do choose to go that route, it's to your advantage to at least understand the fundamentals.

What drives search engine traffic is entirely different than what drives social traffic. While social traffic is driven by branding, catchy ad copy, personalities, etc., search engine traffic (SEO) is generated by keywords. For SEO, keywords mean EVERYTHING. For social traffic, keywords mean NOTHING.

To start generating search engine traffic, there are 2 basic factors to optimizing your blog (SEO). On-site factors (things you do ON your blog) and off-site factors which are actually more simpler. On-Site Factors include things like your domain name and age, your Blog Title & Meta Description, your blog post keyword density, how you organize your blog and its internal linking, outbound links and your blog's theme and the plug-ins you decide to use also play a part.

The off-site factor is actually more simple and is basically incoming links (incoming links are the "currency" of Google) - the quantity and quality of the incoming links and the anchor text that you use in your blog posts. Don't go too fast with incoming links though. You want your incoming links to appear natural - consistent, yet random. To get inbound links, most people start with social bookmarking, submitting to website and blog directories, article marketing, etc.

So, before you even start, educate yourself on the fundamentals of search engine optimization (SEO) first because this will make it much easier than just getting bits and pieces here and there. Once you learn the basics, you'll be better equipped to implement them and, of course, implementation is key.

I sure hope you found some value from this article today. Don't get overwhelmed, just get started and over time everything will start taking shape. Have fun with it!

Laura Paulson is a Marketing and Home Business Success Coach who escaped the "corporate America" rat race. Her passion is helping individuals create time and financial freedom for themselves and their families. She is looking to partner with self-motivated individuals who are looking to make a positive change in their life and ready to put in the effort to make it happen. http://LauraMPaulson.com

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