It took a while but eventually all my SEO friends came around to the idea of blogging. Some might have resisted but nobody can deny that a blog can be a useful tool in your search marketing arsenal. Sometimes surprisingly so. How can bloggers capitalize on this unexpected benefit?
In the bad old days you had to use third party tools to see what you ranked for, and where, but the problem was they didn’t necessarily report phrases that people actually wanted to search for.
It’s no good being #1 for a term that doesn’t send you good quality traffic!
Google changed that with Analytics and their Webmaster Tools.
Using the combination of Analytics and Webmaster Tools you can see what people are looking for, which will inform what kind of subjects you could write about. This is partly where the inspiration for my Email Marketing Tips series came from – there was so much interest in Aweber, subject lines and so on.
As you can see from my screen grab, I am ranking on some phrases. You would expect me to own my own name, but I am quite pleased about a couple of the others.
What you do with this data is you of course will want to strengthen phrases you already are ranking well for, but also see phrases that you are not quite ranking for but have potential, then give them a boost by writing more about that topic and gaining more links.
So I am ranking #1 for Blog Names which is great (though not a massively searched phrase), but I am more interested in the #5 for Thesis Theme, I can’t compete with the official site but could I move up a spot?
Rather than attack phrases that you brainstorm, try grabbing the low hanging fruit. You might find it much easier and it can often by very profitable!
