5-Point SEO Checklist to Help Drive Targeted Traffic to Your Blog or Website

When you think about the 1.8 billion websites that exist today—it's mind-boggling. What most people don’t realize is that the majority of those websites have no visitors. The good news is that you can have thriving website that attracts highly-targeted customers. Here’s a 5-point SEO checklist to help improve your online visibility and drive targeted traffic to your blog and even your website.

5-Point SEO Checklist:

1. Reach the right customers with the right keywords

Choose a search term (or phrase) you want your blog post (or web page) to rank for or appear for in the search engines. For example, if you want to write about vacation homes for retirees, you’ll need to do keyword research to determine what retirees are searching.

You can accomplish this by using a free tool like Google Keyword Planner.

Be niche-specific as possible when choosing keywords. For example, the keyword “vacation homes” is good, but it’s far too broad. Narrow it down to the audience that’s most likely to search keywords and phrases, like ‘vacation homes retirement’ or ‘waterfront vacation homes retire’.

2. Spy on your competitors.

After you’ve found the right keyword you want to rank for, the next important step is to see what your competition is doing. Go to Google, enter the keyword in the search results, and view the first few sites that pop up—there’s your competition. Make sure to skip the ads and scroll down to the regular results.

Review the first 3 or 4 sites and analyze their content to see what they’re lacking. Then determine how your blog or web page can be more effective and beneficial to your target audience.

Tip: Open up a browser in private mode so that your search isn’t influenced by your previous search history (ex. "Private" in Safari or "Incognito" in Chrome).

3. Write superior content.

Whether you’re creating a blog post or a landing page—it doesn’t matter, the same rules apply. You’re going to want to write your best content possible to not only attract Google, but to attract your audience as well.

There are three key elements to include in your content that will separate you from your competitors.

• Choose an attention-grabbing title. Don’t forget to include a keyword within your title.
• Provide a solution to a common problem your audience could be experiencing.
• Provide as much value as possible.

Tip: Make your Meta Tag titles and descriptions click-worthy. Be as specific and interesting as possible.

4. Place a keyword in your header.

Arrange your blog post by having a large title towards the top, along with a few sub-headers.

This informs Google of exactly what your blog post is about. It also makes your page more scannable for viewers. Make sure to place your keyword at least one time in your sub-headers.

Tip: Put the same keyword in the name and alt-tag of your image. Your images should view like the following:

Wrong way: "2458954.jpg"

Right way: "‘vacation homes retirement 1.jpg

5. Get relevant external links.

If you want your website to move up in ranking relatively quickly, you will need to have relevant links coming into your website (or blog) from high-ranking websites. The more links you have, the better. But, always focus on quality links rather than quantity. It’s better to have 57 links from high-ranking websites than 200 or more links from low-quality sites.

The checklist above is a mini-checklist. If you want to really boost traffic and start generating leads and revenue from your website, you’ll need to launch a full-blown SEO campaign.

For further details our SEO plans, contact AmeriList at: 1.800.457.2899.