We are just about ready to get started for The 99 Challenge, but I want to make sure that we are ready to go. There are a number of tools that I use on a daily basis to not only help me with my blog, but to help me market my blog out to the masses INSTANTLY when I’m finished.
It’s always so much easier to get set up correctly from the beginning than it is to go back in time and try to do it then, so I will spend the next couple of posts talking about the blogging tools that I use, the purpose behind why I’m using them, and let you know where to find them (most are free).
Blogging Tool #1 Google Keyword Planner
So today when I started to blog, I knew that I was going to talk about blogging tools. Now, why not sprinkle a little bit of marketing (or keyword planning) into our blog post and get as much traffic out of them as possible? Since you are always blogging around a specific topic or category as we talked about in Post #2, keywords should come into play.
Your keywords are what people are typing into the search engines. When you type in a keyword like “Pizza Restaurants in Minneapolis” you’re not getting results about Car Dealerships. The search engines are taking the search query (or keywords) and comparing it to the information the search engines have in their index. OK… there is a lot more that goes into it, but you get the basics.
Blogging Tool #1 – Google Keyword Planner
Google has a keyword tool that lets you know what keywords people are looking for, how much they are looked for, and the competition that there is for those keywords. There is also some other information that they give you, but it’s not important to us at this time.
To use the Google Keyword Planner, Click Here. This is a free tool, but you will need to have a Google Adwords account. Adwords will cost you money IF you set up AND run a campaign. However, you can use the Keyword Planner tool for free without running a campaign. Just set up the Adwords account and then click on Tools and then the Keyword Planner (like in the screenshot to the right).
Once I got into my Google Keyword Planner, I clicked on “Get search volume for a list of keywords or group them into ad groups”. Then I entered in a few key terms (one per line): Blog tools, blogging tools, marketing tools and a few more. I hit “Get Search Volume” and it spit out some average monthly searches and competition info.
Now, I always download this information (so I can see the exact numbers). To download the info, underneath the chart there is a download button. I do this and open up the information in Microsoft Excel and this is what it looks like (below). We’re concentrating on the yellow area that I highlighted.
What we see is an Average # of Monthly Searches. Then we see competition. So, when we look at the term blogging tools, we see there are 590 monthly searches. Wow…if we could rank well for that keyword we could bring in some traffic to our site. But the key here is to look at the competition.
The competition number is .06. The closer you get to 1.0, the more competition there is. If you see a keyword with a competition score of .99, it’s EXTREMELY competitive. However, when you see a competition score of .06 with 590 searches, it’s VERY GOOD!
I’m going to go with the keyword blogging tools over marketing tools. Why you ask? Sure, marketing tools has a lot more monthly searches, but it’s also a lot more competitive. I would much rather have my blog post rank higher in a low competition search than never be found in a high competition search. Get my point?
These decent traffic keywords with low competition can bring in THOUSANDS of visitors every month to your site. And they are TARGETED visitors looking for exactly what you’re talking about, selling, promoting, etc.
So, I have my keyword that I’m going to write my blog post around. Now I’m not going to just write my post and put the keyword in every sentence. I’m going to write my post and then go back and look for a few places to put my keyword after.
The reason for this is because if you write your blog post while trying to insert a keyword everywhere;
- It does not come off conversational. It comes off like you were trying to write a post around a keyword.
- You will end up putting that keyword in so many times that your post will get flagged by the search engines for keyword spamming (and we don’t want that).
Now I have what I’m going to blog about… Blogging Tools. And I’m going to write my blog and then go back and sprinkle in the keyword in a few places where it makes sense and sounds conversational. Whatever you do, DON’T use it more than 2%. That means if your post is 200 words, don’t use the keyword more than 4 times. With that said, I SELDOM use the keyword more than 1%-1.5%.
Get More Blogging Tools Tomorrow!
That’s your blogging tip for today. Tomorrow I will talk about a couple of more tools that I use everyday.