Have you ever wondered how people find your blog using Google? Well I do! I want to learn what keywords people type into Google and what posts are receiving traffic. If you have Google Analytics installed, this is an easy thing to see!! If you don’t have Google Analytics installed you really need to consider installing it, it’s a very simple process and one that will give you amazing insights into your blog!
So first let’s discuss why you want to know your blog’s keywords. It is important to know what words are performing for you. WHY? Because you write content, (generally) for people to read!! You want to write your posts in a way that make them easy for Google to find, index and then connect to people searching for similar content. Discovering what your blog keywords are is an important set in becoming a good blogger that cares about SEO!
And when you’re looking for a web maintenance company that provides all your web services, including website platform upgrades, site speed improvements, website security fixes, website issue resolutions, and anything else related to improving your business website, then you can check out these website maintenance plans here for your best preferences!
Keywords are important, and hiring services like seo in toronto will help you really begin to realize that posts need to revolve around a topic. Every single post you create should be summed up with one word or phrase. That is IMPORTANT!!! So, let’s dive into keywords and learn which words/phrases are sending traffic my way!
First step, log into your analytics account. Next you’ll want to Traffic Sources tab. This is a very useful tab overall! It can give you statistics on sites referring traffic to you, direct traffic and of course search traffic.
Click Sources and then Search and then Organic. If you are curious about what ‘PAID’ means, if you were to go to Google and search for ‘car insurance,’ the results in yellow at the top and on the side are ‘paid’ search results. If you don’t have an Adwords account, you will never have paid search results!
Once you click into Organic you will see a line graph with information. You will want to look at the primary dimension and change that. We have keyword, source and landing page, or you can select a different metric.
Of course for this post we will be focusing on keywords, but if you are curious, the source dimension will tell you WHICH search engine is sending traffic your way, and the landing page is the page on which visitors land as a result of using search engines. You should also be aware of the top seo companies to consider if you’re planning to hire a company that is good at bringing in traffic using SEO tactics and strategies.
Lets go ahead and click the ‘keyword’ dimension. This will give you a list of words or phrases that people actually use to find your posts!! This will give you incredible insight into how and why a post is popular. Did you title it correctly? Did you say a phrase in the post that is being found by Google? Did you focus on a keyword, or tell a story using a specific phrase that is sending traffic to the post.
Generally, your brand or blog name is in the top 5. Usually, if you’re blog is two words, it will show up as one word, two words, the domain is even spelled out. People are searching for your blog, and they are using it’s name in Google! That’s a good thing!
So let’s take a look at a particular post and the search keywords that correspond to it! The post I’d like to look at is my Yum Yum Sauce Recipe. The keywords that send this post traffic are:
- Yum yum sauce recipe
- Yum yum sauce
- Yum yum sauce recipes
- Recipe for yum yum sauce
- Yum sauce
- How to make yum yum sauce recipe
- Japanese yum yum sauce recipe
- How to make yum yum sauce
- yum yum sauce recipe ketchup
- asian yum yum sauce recipe
- best yum yum sauce recipe
- copy cat yum yum sauce
- copycat yum yum sauce
- how do you make yum yum sauce?
There are over 30 keyword combinations; these are only the top 14. In total, I have gotten 247 visits from Google on this post. So why is this important, because I KNEW the focus keyword of this post! Take a look at my Yoast SEO plugin that displays below every post on my blog. It helps me with SEO, forcing me to focus on ONE specific keyword: yum yum sauce recipe. Now take a minute to go back up into the keywords. I bolded my keyword, for this post, to show you how important it is to have a focused keyword. I intentionally wrote ‘yum yum sauce recipe’ in this post multiple times. I wanted that phrase and variations of that phrase to exist in the post so that Google, when it’s robot visits my site, it will see those phrases and be more likely to connect readers to me!
Keywords are important. ALWAYS keep them in mind when writing a post! I’m working on a post about how to use Yoast SEO to the fullest, stay tuned!!
Hittail is also good for showing keywords. It’s not free but worth it if you’re interested in long tail keywords.
I’ll check it out. Alexa, SEM Rush and others will do it for free also! I have SEOmoz pro version and I use it often as well!
I haven’t tried Yoast yet, but I do use the settings built-in to Genesis Framework for SEO. A lot of times I’m lazy and don’t fill it out. But when I do, wow… BIG DIFFERENCE.
I used to code websites before blogging platforms or google existed and some of this is basic into how a webpage functions. Then when search engines came along, it was obviously very important to be sure your site shared information with the web crawlers.
It’s also important to be organized in how you present your information. The more junk the web crawler has to dig thru, the more likely it will turn around and go somewhere else!
oh friend – HOW did I not know you had a little place on the web here? It’s fabulous and I’ve gotten lost on it now since you tagged me on IG. YAY for you guys!!
We missed you at Blissdom. Hanging with you guys last year was a highlight, but it was a good year. Jon Acuff makes it worth it. 🙂
Maybe we can connect on our food stuff. What conferences are you coming to this year? Give my best to Lacey.
ahhh thanks so much Jen!!
Wow. Thanks for the great info. I’m super excited to find your blog. I myself am a fairly new blogger and so appreciate the great advice, content and the story of your family.