Keyword Optimization: How To Get Traffic

Part of the objective of blogging is not simply writing and getting your ideas across, but also getting readers to read what you write. You need readers or visitors or what is called as"traffic".

How To Get Traffic?
There are several ways to get traffic to your blog or website. You can tell your friends about your new blog. You can share your url or website address (http://ticklethythoughts.blogspot.com) via emails, social networking sites like facebook, friendster, myspace, etc. You can also bookmark your site or submit it to directories. You can also promote via word of mouth. But all these require repetition hence are tedious processes. This is where "keyword optimization" plays a significant role. But what is "keyword optimization"? It's basically optimizing your blog/site so that it ranks high in the search results.

WARNING: This post is just a crash course..

How to Optimize?

1. First you need to choose the keywords you want your blog/site to rank on the SERP (Search Engine Result Placement --Search Engines such as GOOGLE.com, YAHOO.com, BING.com, MSN.com) See image below for the keywords I have optimized for this blog.
   
   
   
   
2. Second, make a post/article containing the keywords you have chosen. There is no certain rule on how to write your article so it becomes search engine friendly. But over the years I have learned some tips/tricks which prove to be effective every time I engage in SEO- Search Engine Optimization.

• Include your keyword in your post title.
• Mention your keyword at the beginning, middle and end of your post.
• Mention your keyword a couple of times at least thrice in your post or more depending on the length of your blog post. This is called "keyword density".
  
  
  3. Third, Promote your article or blog post. The purpose of promotion is to share your link and create back links. How do you do this?

• Bookmark your blog post - Digg, Jumptags, Stumpedia
  
• Twit your blog post - Sign up for Twitter
  
• Comment on Do Follow Blogs. Leave real comments and don't spam or your comments will be deleted. If you want to leave your "active url" on the comment board, just use this code- <a href="http://ticklethythoughts.blogspot.com/">Tickle Thy Thoughts</a> . Just replace the url and the title.
  

Organic Traffic
It will take a few hours to a few days to a few weeks to months before you can see results. But this is for a long term traffic. If you succeed, you will be getting "Organic Traffic". What's this? It's the traffic coming from search engines. So even if you don't update or promote your blog actively or visit one chatbox to the other, you are assured of regular visitors from the search engines. Below are some screenshots of the keywords my blog ranks high in the Search Engine.

Like what I said, this is just a crash course. In my next articles I will share to you how to choose your keywords, the high PR bookmarking sites and directories and other stuff about Search Engine Optimization. If you haven't followed my blog, I urge you to do it now or subscribe to my feed.