Let me start off today’s edition of 31-Days to Kick Your Blog in the Butt with a brief apology just in case I get to complaining a little too much. For Day-18, I want you to focus not on “the numbers” but on your readers. Too many bloggers get so caught up on the darn stats and numbers they forget about what is really important. Building a relationship with your readers so they come to trust you as a reliable source of information is what you should be focusing on and not just the numbers. What too many bloggers worry about is Google.
Today’s lesson
Google doesn’t control your success
Do I need to say that again, Google doesn’t control your success. To many times I visit with bloggers, especially new bloggers and they are too worried about “page rank” and where they come up in search request in Google. Folks, Google doesn’t control whether your blog will be successful or not. You do. Instead of trying to write those catchy blog post, with all those catchy titles and keywords, write your blog post to your readers. There, I said it again. Write to and for your reader. Your ideal reader. Or another way, to your target audience, niche, target market, your end goal.
If you write for your prospective reader, they will find you and you will have traffic. The problem I see too many times, a lot of new bloggers do this ass backwards. They get so caught up in the numbers game, they basically leave their readers in the dark. These new bloggers are writing for Google or the other search engines and they never see the benefits of building a community of loyal readers who come back time and time again.
Chances are if you are reading this post and the other post in our series, 31-Days to Kick Your Blog in the Butt, you are a business, professional service firm or someone who wants to make money from blogging. You are wanting to use a blog to market and/or promote something. While using a blog and social media to promote your business is our focus here at Blog For Profit, lets step back from that for just a moment.
Instead of viewing your blog as a way to marketing and/or promote, see it for what it is: a conversation about topics that are important to everyday people.
You can’t interact with Google like you can your readers
Why are you blogging? Is it to interact with Google or to interact and communicate with your readers? I will bet you it is so you can interact with an actual person. And this is the key to getting results, or a return on your investment of time and resources.
You are trying to reach potential customers or clients. You should also be trying to build a relationship of trust and community with your readers.
If that is the case, you should be providing information in a form and fashion they can use and which they can understand. This is the key to getting noticed. And when that happens, you will start getting traffic, which will get you moving in the search engines.
Write your post for the organic searcher, humans, and not for Google
While I don’t want you so focused on the numbers you forget about your readers. Google and SEO is important and should not be overlooked. But, you can also use what your readers are looking for to your advantages when it comes to SEO and placement in the search engines. All of you should be looking at one very important stat for your blog. Go into the stats program of your choice and look at the search terms or search strings that your blog shows up in. You should actually be able to click on the terms and it will take you to the Google search page where this was typed in. Based on what this live person, the human search engine typed in, where is your blog showing up? If you are not on the first page of Google for this term, start writing about it if it is relevant to your blog’s topic or niche. By doing so, you are giving your readers and potential readers what they are looking for.
This technique gives your readers what they are looking for and at the same time, you are moving up in the Google search pages. A win-win for everyone.
Today’s homework
I want you to write your next post completely for your readers without even worrying about the search engines. Look at what your readers are looking for and solve their problem or answer their questions. If you keep your readers happy, you will keep Google happy at the same time.
