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1. Give #1 Priority to the Long Tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are low hanging fruits. If you use the right combination of long tail keywords in your content, not only your site gets more search traffic but you can actually increase your website overall sales.

If you are confused about what exactly are long tail keywords, let me simplify them for you.

• “cars” – short tail keyword
• “best sedan cars” – medium tail keyword
• “best sedan cars in India” – long tail keyword

A long tail keyword usually contains 4 or more keywords in it.

Even if you have a new blog with not so many backlinks, by targeting the long tail keywords, you can increase your overall search traffic really quickly. That’s the reason why I highly suggest you to start finding long tail keywords while writing content.

If you are wondering how to find better long tail keywords, here are few simple yet most effective tips for you.

• Using an effective SEO tool like SEMrush or Long Tail Pro will really help you in quickly finding the better long tail keywords. If you are a beginner who knows nothing much about SEO or keyword research, I highly recommended you to start using tools. Most of these tools offer free trials so you can buy them only if you find them useful.

• You can also use Google “Searches Related to” function (which can be seen after Google search results when you enter any popular keyword) for finding the list of potential long tail keywords.

• I also strongly recommend you to start using Quora (a Q&A based site) while coming up with blog post ideas or doing long tail keyword research. On this site, you will generally find lots of great topic ideas which can be turned into blog posts no matter what your niche is. It’s a great platform for people who are interested in keyword research.

If you are more curious about keyword research, I suggest you to check out this tutorial as it’s really helpful for beginners to find great keywords.

2. Write Link-Worthy Content

Observe any top blogger or any authority blog, you will notice they attract a lot of natural backlinks.

Whether you know it or not, getting quality links is the fastest way to increase the authority of any site and they also help in increasing your search rankings for that particular keywords really quickly.

One of the biggest reasons majority of the bloggers fail to build profitable blogs is this: their content sucks. They don’t add any value to their audience with their content.

Why should anyone listen to you if you add no value?

People buy from the authorities. Not from strangers.

If you want to make more sales or build a loyal readership around your blog, your first step should be creating great content that solves your audience problems.

How can you create content that naturally attracts more links and sells itself?

Here are few smart strategies majority of the successful content marketing experts use to grow their online businesses.

• Great content always revolves around people, not search engines like Google. If you are trying to please Google by stuffing keywords, you are NEVER going to build a blog that ranks well in search engines. Search engine bots are really smart and they know how to reward the sites that have more user engagement. So start writing for your audience and try to get more social shares to increase your search rankings.

• In-depth articles with over 2000+ words usually get a lot of natural backlinks, social shares and comments. I have been writing long form of content from last 1 year and noticed a HUGE increase in both my search engine traffic and website sales. So if you want to build an authority blog, spend more time to craft in-depth articles. They can help you quickly build loyal readership around your network.

The below screenshot will show you the importance of writing in-depth content. See the average content length of the top 10 search results on Google. They are averaging 2,000+ words.

• Always I mean always link out to other bloggers content whenever you publish new stuff on your blog. “Reciprocity” is the most powerful way to get what you want. If you want more comments, start leaving comments on other blogs. If you want more backlinks to your content, start frequently linking out to others. Make sure to email the people whom you have linked to. That way they will appreciate your work and possibly do you the same favour in the future.

3. Get your Hands Dirty in Using SEO Tools

Learn the art of right on-page optimization

On-page SEO is optimizing your web page for specific keywords. Most people think on-page SEO is all about keyword stuffing when it’s really not.

Make sure to find out the primary and secondary keywords for your blog posts before you even start writing them and place those keywords in the most prominent places such as headlines, sub headings, image alt tags, links, URL, meta description etc. to rank higher in search results.

Yoast SEO Plugin

Yoast SEO is a gift for all the WordPress users. This plugin makes it really easy even for beginners to quickly optimize their posts and pages for search engines. All you have to do is to pick a keyword and it will help you where to put your keywords on your content to get better search rankings. It’s a free yet most powerful SEO plugin which can be downloaded from here.

SEMrush

SEMrush is one of the best tools for SEO, it can be helpful for doing keyword research as well as backlink analysis. You can also find out your website issues using their feature called “Site Audit” and fix those issues to increase your overall search rankings. All in all, SEMrush is a top tool for those who wants to beat their competitors in terms of SEO.

4. Headlines are Everything

Never forget to write magnetic headlines.

Whether you know it or not, 9 out 10 people decide to click on your posts after reading your headlines. If they are not compelling enough, they will NEVER bother even though if your content is good.

Also, make sure to use your primary keywords in your headlines. They are essential while optimizing your content for search engines.

If you have issues in coming up with keyword rich headlines, try using Portent (it’s a free tool). It helps you create many headline variations if you provide it with a keyword. Moreover, you can utilize sensory words to make your content and headlines more attractive.

Here are few tips to write great headlines that will please both your readers and search crawlers.

Use numbers: While creating headlines, use numbers. List posts always go viral on social media sites. If you can grab more social shares, it will eventually boost your search rankings.

Moreover, lists posts are easy to digest by your readers.

Ex: “Top 10 Ways to Get Rid Of Belly Fat” always performs better than the posts like “How can you reduce belly fat”. List posts always beat other combination of headlines.

Write case studies: People love case studies. People would love to spread your case studies if they see benefit in them.

Use proven formulas: Analyze all the popular posts headlines in your niche. Find out which posts are getting more traffic, shares or comments. Once you make a list of proven headlines, you can simply make tweaks to create your own flavoured headlines.

For instance if you find “Top 10 Ways I Use Twitter to Grow My Traffic” is one of the popular posts in marketing niche, you can tweak something like “Top 10 Ways I Use Instagram to Grow My Fitness Blog”. Are you getting me?

5. Stop Writing for Google

One of the most common mistakes majority of the bloggers make while creating content is they write just for Google. What happens when your whole focus is to please Google only? You will end up using lots of keywords that are unnecessary and you will ignore your readers while concentrating on Google crawlers.

If you really want to grow your search traffic, stop pleasing Google. Help your blog readers with your content and Google will help you boost your search traffic. It’s as simple as that.

You may ask, how can I increase my search traffic with my content if I stop writing for Google?

Start using the language that your target audience might type on Google to find you. I’m not recommending you to start keyword stuffing with your target audience language, but start using what they might type on Google to solve their issues or know more about the products you are promoting.

That way you are satisfying both your audience and Google to increase your search traffic with your content. Here are few tips to stay away from Google penalties like Panda, Penguin or Hummingbird.

• Always do SEO audit of your sites. Performing a full and in-depth SEO audit of your sites can reveal all the issues that your website have. You can use tools like SEMrush for conducting a detailed SEO audit of your site.

Have a look at the below image to perform complete SEO audit of your site from BoughDigital. Once you perform the full technical SEO audit of your site using tools like SEMrush, it can really fix all your site issues by improving your site’s overall search rankings.

• Don’t build backlinks just to your home page. Whenever you are trying to build links using guest posts, email outreach etc., make sure to pass all that link juice to your inner pages. If your inner pages are stronger in terms of link quality, your home page automatically gets better rankings.

• Focus on quality instead of quantity. Instead of posting four 500 words article, publish one post with high quality. This can help you get more social shares, comments and links from other sites.

• Always spy on the latest Google algorithm updates. You can subscribe to the top SEO sites like Moz, Search Engine Land etc to keep yourself up to date with the latest algorithms rolled out by Google.

Final Thoughts about Creating Content That Ranks Well in Google

Creating good content is easy but writing content that ranks well in search results takes a lot of work. Always give top priority to your audience. Most people fail to increase their search traffic because they don’t write keyword rich content.

Be patient and start focusing on long tail keyword research. The more you use long tail keywords in your content creation strategy the faster you get the results. By following the 5 secret strategies while creating content mentioned in this guide, you will be easily able to increase your search traffic.