Using SEO tools wisely and making sure you’re doing the right things to be found by search engines is a constant concern for Influencers. We asked Parenting Influencer and SEO expert Cerys Parker shares her tips for utilising free online tools for blog growth.
What if I told you that you can grow your blog organically without investing a single penny in fancy “SEO” tools, saving you thousands of pounds a year?
Instead, you can get 90% of the information at your fingers tips for free!
It doesn’t matter whether you have WordPress, SquareSpace or Blogger. In fact you could have written your site in html and these would still work.
Using just 3 tools that are available to anyone that blogs you can see keyword trends, work out competition and use it to create compelling content that people are actually searching for.
What are the 3 magic SEO tools you can use for free?
Google Search Console https://search.google.com/search-console/about
Google Analytics https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/
and
Answer the Public https://answerthepublic.com/
Google Search Console
In my opinion this is better than any other “SEO Tool” I have tried.
Once you have this set up and your sitemaps submitted, the wealth of information here is amazing.
Head to the performance section and see what phrases people are putting into Google Searches and seeing your site in the results.
Find out what page you are on and combine it with the phrases that people are putting in to update your blog post and move it up the search results.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics should be your new best friend.
Not just for reporting the stats or seeing who sent you some blog love.
BUT… to use to help you create new content based on what people are searching for.
Once connected to Search Console you will be able to find where people are going on your site from a particular search term and use it to help you improve your site layout, content plan and user experience.
Head to Behaviour Flow and set up a Segment of Organic Traffic and then see where people are going on your site. Where do they leave most? Where are they heading to after they arrive?
NB: If you have WordPress.com site then you can not connect to Google Analytics unless you upgrade to a business account. Which costs around $300 US a year. Or you could move to a self-hosted WordPress site — while you would be paying for your own hosting, it will likely save you 90% of that cost.
Answer the Public
Answer the Public is a great site for expanding on things.
If you have a post that is doing well, sending you Organic Traffic or from Social Media, then you want to create similar posts.
You can take your base word or phrase and from there and put it into Answer the Public.
It will give you questions, sentences and random suggestions of what to write about next.
The important thing
The important thing is not to get overwhelmed. Don’t try to do everything all the time. Start playing around and using these tools and see what works for you.
Cerys is a full time ‘award winning parenting blogger’ at Rainy Day Mum. Fed up with the jargon-filled advice provided to bloggers, she started The Blog Surgery to help others to grow, develop and earn taking their hobby blogs to pro as she did for her own “silly little blog!”
Find her blog at Rainy Day Mum and the tips and resources she uses and support she offers including a free video course on setting up Sitemaps and Search Console over on The Blog Surgery.
About
BritMums is the UK’s original collective of lifestyle bloggers and digital influencers, fueling the country’s most influential social content. We lead the online conversation with members who are parent social influencers creating content on topics ranging from food, parenting, travel, politics, style and more.
I just have to say, whilst those three tools are very good to get the very, very, very basics started when it comes to SEO, they really only cover about 5% of SEO work that websites need.
For example, tools such as Screaming Frog can be used to find issues with indexation, crawlability, site architecture, content structure and canonicalisation. MajesticSEO and SEMRush can be used to review equity flow, trust and backlink strength… There’s a lot more out there. 🙂
But yes, these three are a good place to get started with an initial look. Oh, and if you’re wondering whether I’m just a person spewing random nonsense, I’ve been working in SEO for over a decade and currently work as the SEO Lead in a leading agency.
I don’t want to sound condescending, but I feel the need to educate people on the sheer depth of SEO. This is because, when people think that SEO is as simple as keywords and writing content, it both devalues my profession and can actually hold them back.