By now you should have heard that if you aren’t blogging, you better start soon. Blogging is one of the best ways to generate new content and optimize your website. Generating new content is more likely to get you found online and keep people coming back for more, especially if you regularly offer them valuable content.

Like all the other text on your website, you have to be careful choosing what words you use in your blog. What some people don’t realize is you are writing for two different types of audiences: human and non-human. Blog posts should be thought provoking for your human audience, but also search engine optimized for your non-human audience. Search engines regularly send out web-crawlers to map out everything on the web. The web-crawlers collect information, such as keywords and phrases, and index it so that when someone searches something that relates to your business you are more likely to show up first.

Search engine optimization or SEO is very complex, and many businesses pay a lot to get their website and blog optimized. Here are two things to consider and some free tools to use when trying to add SEO to your blog posts.

Choose Your Keywords Wisely

Web-crawlers search for keywords and phrases because they can’t detect pictures and fancy graphics. To figure out the best keywords and phrases you have to learn to think like the people searching for your blog. Google Adwords is a great way to determine the keywords and phrases people are searching. Once you determine which keywords and phrases to use make sure to include them more than once  in your post and also in any titles, headlines and subheads.

Link And Be Linked

When you add links to your posts that readers can click on for additional information, it adds to your creditability. Having links also increases your ranking on search engines. If others link to you from their blog or website it increases your ranking even more, especially if it is a government agency or educational institute. When credible sites link back to you web-crawlers consider you an expert and list you as an authority on your subject. To find out who is linking to you check out Back Link Checker.

Adding SEO to your blog by using keywords and phrases and links and backlinks is a great way to be found online and establish yourself as an expert. If you want to learn more, check out our free 20 minute training.

I have good news and bad news for you.  The bad news is that online marketing is constantly changing, forcing you to continually learn new things.  The good news is that online marketing is constantly changing, which levels the playing field so that the little guy doesn’t have to be left in the dust. It can seem like every time you master something, the big boys like Google, Bing and Yahoo step in and shake things up by changing the rules of the game. The rules of search engine optimization are a perfect example of this. Companies spend thousands of dollars trying to climb to the top of leading search engines. SEO can be fairly complex.  Google and Bing closely guard their algorithms.  Unlocking SEO secrets and being up to date on SEO trends is what keeps online marketing companies like us in business. We figured out how to incorporate keywords and build backlinks to get to the top of the search engines. Now that a substantial number of companies have mastered the SEO game, the big boys are shaking it up again. An example of an up-and-coming SEO game-changer is the incorporation and optimization of video for marketing. Forbes Magazine calls video “search-engine cat nip,” because nearly half of all search results display videos content on the first page. Ironically, however, only about 1% of your competitors is likely have a video marketing strategy. While your competitor may have mastered getting his or her website optimized, you can sweep in with a video, and often shoot right to the top of the search engine results. Video marketing is your golden opportunity to stand out.