#bloggingedumacation: How To Improve Your SEO

Do you have an SEO plan for you blog? Are you familiar with SEO? aka Search Engine Optimization. I talk about how to find your Keyword Search Results in Google Analytics and how to find them in Google Webmaster Tools.

But what do those keywords tell you and what should you do with the information?

The keywords tell you what terms or phrases people used to get to your site. Or to land on your site. I highly recommend that you take some time either monthly or quarterly to go over those terms and expound on them…ie…write more blog posts centered around the words that are bringing people to your site from a search engine result.

Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) actually gives you some pretty good data as far as how you are ranking for those terms in the search engine via Google. When you are looking at your Search Query results, you’ll see a column that says Average Position. That Average Position is the ranking spot that you appear in a search result. Let’s take a look at a specific example so I can explain it better visually.

Okay, so if you look at the above picture, I’ve already sorted by my Average Position (the far right column) to show everything in a descending order (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 etc). The very first keyword in my list is my blog name, pink heels pink truck. You can see that I have 104 impressions. Of those 104 impressions, I’ve received 34 clicks over to my website which calculates to be 33% CTR (click through rate). So even though there were 104 impressions, only 34 clicks happened. You see that number 1.0 under the Average Position column? That means my website appears in the #1 spot on Page 1 of the search results for that keyword phrase pink heels pink truck.

Okay, so really…I can’t do anything SEO-wise to improve on that keyword phrase because it’s my blog name. I mean I guess I could but it wouldn’t really benefit me in any way. So let’s look at another example, and I’ll expound on what I can do to improve my SEO.

Keyword Phrase: beach theme baby shower ideas

In the last 30 days, I’ve had 2 people search for that specific phrase. And 1 person click through to my site, so a 50% CTR. My blog appears at the #1 spot in the search results.

Here’s my plan:
I wrote a recap on a beached theme baby shower that I hosted for one of my best friends awhile back. I get a lot of hits to that post (just look at the different ways people are searching for ideas). Considering I don’t have any preggo friends right now, I don’t really have any reason to create another entire beach themed baby shower. However, what I can do is to write a DIY post on how I made the invitations. And then I would make sure that phrase was somewhere in my post and I would link it back to my original beach themed baby shower post. I can write a DIY post on how I made the scalloped tablecloth for the cake table. There are so many different things I can do in order to really improve my SEO for that specific post. I can see there is a need for it just by seeing all the different forms of beach theme baby shower ideas that appear in my Search Query results for my blog.

Your goal is to work on posts that are similar to posts you are already ranking for. It’s cool to see my site appearing in that #1 position, but when I look further at the CTR rate, it reveals a whole lot more info. So yes, I may be #1 in the results, but people are skipping right past my site and clicking through to something else.

Understanding Average Position…
If your average position says 7.0…that means you appear on average in the 7th spot on page 1 of the search results for that keyword/page.
If your average position says 15.0…that means you appear on average in the 15th spot of the search results for that keyword/phrase.
If your average position says 2.7….that means that you appear on average at the #2 spot on the FIRST page, but that you could appear also at the #9 spot for one person and the #1 spot for another…and then an average is taken across everyone and it equals 2.7 (don’t do the math on my example, it won’t add up…just know that if you see something like 2.7, it means that you show up, ON AVERAGE, at the #2 spot on the FIRST page of the search results.

If you show up at the #11 spot, you are the first spot on the SECOND page. And your goal should be to try and get yourself into the #10 spot on the FIRST page.

Having an SEO plan is super important if you are looking to grow your site. The other tip is to be able to rank in the top 5-6 spots for a specific keyword across all platforms. Let me explain:

If you already rank #1 for beach theme baby shower ideas and have a high CTR for the phrase beach theme baby shower ideas, then create a YouTube video so you can chase for the #2 spot. And create a G+ post so that you can chase for the #3 spot. And get some pins or a pin board going on Pinterest to chase for the #4 spot. So that when someone google’s beach theme baby shower ideas, your stuff appears as the #1, #2, #3 and #4 spot in the search results. Make sense?

So, don’t just limit your SEO plan to your website. Work it on all of your platforms.

I hope I’ve given you some food for thought on how to improve your SEO!

Want some more SEO help? Check out my SEO Podcast Episode on the Boss Girl Creative podcast.

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