Yakezie and publicity to your site | Bloggers Lair | Yakezie Forums

The best tip I learned last year was that it takes time to for Google to "love" your site. That means for 3-9 months or longer, most of your visits will be from referring links (comments you leave). I'm not there yet with my Challenger site, but my articles on HubPages have crossed the point where most of their traffic is from organic search and not fellow HP users. Took about 4 months.

Lesson: the switch will be flipped at some point down the road. Will you still be there when it happens, or will you have given up too soon?

Other general tips:

• Make sure posts are over 300 words
• If you use WordPress, get an SEO plugin like Yoast (or All In One SEO); it will help you get your keyword density correct
• Use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to research EXACT phrases and how many monthly searches they get, and what long-tail phrases you can include
• Don't worry too much about SEO; many on here describe their AHA moment as when they stopped paying attention to SEO and wrote with their own voice from the heart

John makes a lot of good points.  I wouldn't worry about keyword density though.  That used to be much more important for SEO, but it isn't as important these days.  It is more important to write for your visitors.

Also don't worry too much about ups and downs in traffic early on.  Until you get some google love, your traffic will largely depend on how active you are on forums and blogs.  The good thing is that all that work is also building up links which will ultimately help you with google.  Just be consistent and willing to keep at it for months without seeing any major traffic.

When you are commenting on other blogs, keep in mind which ones are close to your specific niche and which ones you enjoy reading the most.  You may want to further connect with that blogger to help each other out.  Blog marketing is a lot of give and take.  Help promote other bloggers and that generosity usually comes back to you.

I agree about keyword density. Yoast keeps me from overstuffing if I'm trying to target. Sometimes it feels like I'm more worried about being punished than rewarded.

I have said this to people before on this forum and I am often right. DO NOT WORRY ABOUT TRAFFIC YET.  You have been blogging for one month if you care about traffic and/or income – YOU WILL FAIL.  There are very few exceptions this rule. 

You have 11 or so posts.  Worry about SEO (which I think you have the wrong definition) in a couple months.  Google barely knows you exist yet – it is natural. 

Thanks guys, this is really great information for all us starting out.

I don't know much about SEO yet, even though I probably should after a year and a half of blogging. I don't get many visitors from Yakezie – a handful + a day. But if you visit Yakezie members blogs, comment and engage in discussion and network, then you'll consistantly have more traffic becuase every time you post people will have you on thier readers and they can read your posts and comment.

It takes a while to build up traffic, I do enjoy seeing my Alexa ranking go down when I visit my site, but I think patience is the key.  All the veteran members here definitely share a lot of wisdom about the do's and don'ts of blogging so just keep on doing what you have been doing.

Wow you guys really are a wealth of information.  Looking around the internet I read SEO this and Keywords that to get good rankings.  But they never mention you have to do your time down in the trenches to get out.  I really appreciate each and every comment.  I took these to heart. My University Money, thanks I will get some more posts then come and talk. 

Start with finding approach that allows to post consistently new blog post 2 or 3 times a week. And do this for years.

That is the basis.

Select a long list of keywords that are somewhat related to each other and start writing regular posts that are SEO optimized for one of these keywords. Link internally between your posts for the keywords that are most important to you. Start with the keywords that have a few thousand search results per month and the lowest competition. Then expand.

And keep hanging in there for years. 

SpringCoin (Formerly DebtEye) said:

I also want to recommend an awesome tool by SEOmoz.  They have a 30 day free trial, and you have access to all the features that a Pro member has.  

1) Use Google Keyword Research Tool – Compile a list of all your potential targeted Keywords

2) Use SEOmoz Keyword Analysis-  Their tool will actually give you a list of all the Page 1 sites, and tell you what your chances are to be ranked on the first page.  

3) Use SEOmoz On-Page Analysis-  SEOmoz will "Grade" your page to make sure it's optimized.  It will tell you where you need to improve on.  

I've been using them for about 4-5 months.  I've been getting awesome results so far, sometimes it only took me about 1.5 week to get on page 1 for a keyword.  

If you end up testing it out, feel free to PM me and I'll walk you through what I did.  Hope this helped! 

Great info.

I also agree that time is one of the things you have to overcome.  Google will not give most sites much love in their first months of existence.  Once you 'prove' that you're in it for the long haul, you'll find yourself in more and more search listings.