Defining Yourself: Keywords Essential to Increasing Blog Traffic and Post Reads

After seeking to "get the word out" about my blog last week, this week my job was to make my blog "findable"! The first thing I did was "Google" my blog. Wow, was that an eye opener. I couldn't even find it! After reading through some of the resources from our book, I was able to connect some of the dots.

Where to Start

After reading the assigned chapers, I decided to visit some of the resources from the book and some of my own. I decided to watch the SE Basics video on YouTube. The advice was very similar to that of our Scott book. You need backlinks and good, updated, unique content. They also recommend that you gain the status of an authority or get links from those with such status etc. They also explain that the longer your blog/page is around, the more "points" you get. Since I can't change how long my blog has been out there, I decided to start with improving my content.

Fresh Content

Fresh content is pretty easy in theory: write something new. I have an absolute passion for the Olympic Movement, so I decided to write a blog about the new "Raise Our Flag" initiative through the USOC.

I included the above video and photograph in addition to linking to the Team USA website. As a former intern with Facebook friends and Twitter followers (including superiors at the USOC) from the organization, I also posted my post (ha) to FB and twitter. I hope that they will see this article and give feedback and share it. I wrote an article about the Olympic Games for the State News as well so they look for my content. As a former intern, I have some "authority" status in the sense that I was a part of the Movement, but this still leaves major room for improvement as I was merely an intern.

Other Additions

In order make my blog easier to find, I also included tags for each of my posts. Keyword selections at the moment would be : Olympic Movement, Team USA, inspirational stories, life improvement, and blogging by living. I created an Olympic Movement lense on Squidoo that I plan to build out more as I go in addition to adding more lenses for the other topics in my blog. I haven't fully decided yet, but since I have such a passion for the Games, perhaps that will be a more refined purpose of my blog.

Analysis

Last week, after promoting my posts on Twitter and FB, I received 26 views the next day alone, a jump up from 1 and 2 total previously. All but two of the views were a result of having posted on FB, so I know that I need to utilize FB and build out with more backlinks, etc in the future.