Use Google’s Keyword Planner to Get More Traffic to Your Blog

There are a number of reasons why people start writing a blog. Some want to simply get their thoughts out to the world while others use blogs to earn money from things like referrals and Google AdWords.

No matter why someone writes a blog, they always want their work to be seen by as many people as possible. Increasing traffic to a blog is both an art and a science, and there are a number of tools like attractive web design that can help bloggers achieve this goal.

The most straightforward of these is to utilize Google’s Keyword Planner to target things that people are searching for and write in a way that optimizes specific words and phrases.

The Basics

The best free way to get more traffic to your blog is to get on the first page of the results that people see when they search in Google. However, doing so can be incredibly difficult for certain keywords, and this is particularly true for those that will make people a lot of money when visitors click on related ads.

Even if people are able to get a blog post on the first Google results page, the location where it appears still matters. Individuals who are searching for something on Google are much more likely to click on the first link that comes up, and the chances of people visiting your page decrease the further down that the link to your blog appears.

Luckily, Google Keyword Planner helps people evaluate what web users are searching for and their likelihood of ranking well. It gives people an idea of the type of competition that they will be facing when targeting certain phrases. In addition, it allows them to search for what are known as long-tail keywords that may be easier to rank for. These are longer related keyword phrases that people search for that other bloggers and website owners may have neglected to write about. This makes it much easier for individuals to get higher rankings and more traffic to their blog.

The First Steps

When people begin to think about the keywords that they would like to optimize for in order to bring more traffic to their blog, they should make a list of the general topics that they write about. Many blogs feature lists of article tags that help keep them organized and direct users to content that they may be looking for, and this can be a good place to start. It’s best to try to come up with as many general categories as possible as this may be a big help later when actually looking up keyword competition and frequency of usage.

From there, bloggers should begin to think of keywords and phrases that are relevant to the content that they write. They should make a list of specific keyword phrases that are pertinent to their blog. These can be as long or as short as people would like, but blog owners should try to put themselves in their readers’ place and think of things that they would be searching for. They should also keep in mind that shorter and more common phrases can often have a lot of competition, and this makes them harder to rank for.

Bloggers should do some research about what keywords are already bringing in traffic in addition to analyzing those that show up in the related searches suggestion section at the bottom of Google’s results page. It may also be helpful to look at what keywords competitors are ranking for using tools like SEMrush. This will allow bloggers to get an idea of what other sites are ranking for and can potentially expand the list of keyword phrases to use in their writing.

Using the Keyword Planner

After people have developed a list of the search based keyword phrases that they think will increase traffic to their site, they can begin systematically analyzing them using the Google Keyword Planner. This will tell bloggers exactly how many people are searching for specific keyword phrases and the number of other sites where they appear. This will give you an idea of what the competition is like for specific keywords and will help you eliminate things from the phrase lists that may be difficult to rank for.

Google Keyword Planner will also show people when phrases are not commonly searched for, and it can give people an idea of which phrases that they probably should not highlight in their blog posts if they are specifically looking to maximize traffic. However, keywords that people do not search for often generally have less competition, so it is often easier for people’s blog posts to get on the front page if they use them in their content.

The Bottom Line

Google Keyword Planner can be an excellent search keywords tool to help people increase traffic to their blog by targeting specific phrases. However, people should not forget that the best way to get more visitors is to produce high-quality content on a consistent basis. The Keyword Planner is a great guide in helping people find specific phrases to use, but bloggers should ultimately be focused on increasing traffic by creating a loyal following of people who enjoy reading their work.