what you need to know about SEO to get results 🔑

Today's challenge:

Apply SEO techniques to

your post's topic, title & outline

Hey friend,

When you think of SEO, what comes to your mind?

It's probably something shady. Or "marketing-y". But it doesn't have to be -- in fact, I believe that understanding SEO is a developer superpower.

Because SEO means free, recurring traffic! Unlike Twitter where a tweet can get you traffic for a day or two, SEO can bring you consistent traffic months or years after you've published a post.

So what is SEO exactly? SEO is a way of making sure that search engines can understand what your page is about, that it contains quality up-to-date information from an authoritative source, and will answer the question that the searcher had in mind (reader intent!!!).

It's Day #3 of our blogging challenge, and I'm going to walk you through my basic on-page SEO process so you can see how easy it can be to make your blog search-friendly, from keyword research to content.

It includes these steps:

1. Discover keywords
2. Niche down to a main keyword you can rank for
3. Find related tail keywords
4. Write the post and include those keywords in strategic places
5. Craft an excellent title people will want to click on

EXAMPLE: In today's email, I'll walk you through my process of how to write a post that's generally about "how to use react router".

Step 1. Discover keywords

First thing I'll do is think about keywords. I'll open up Google and search for "react router". Thanks to Keywords Everywhere (a browser extension), I can immediately see that they think about 2,400 people search for "react router" every month in the United States.

Not bad! I'll check the related keywords and see results like "react router typescript", "react router redirect", "react router params", and "react router tutorial" are all being searched for. That's great. There's a whole cluster of keywords around React Router, meaning I have a chance to rank for multiple keywords.

Next I'll double-check the data in my favorite keyword research tool for beginners, KeySearch.

It's a way cheaper tool than most SEO tools ($17/mo vs $99+/mo), and I used KeySearch to boost one of my site's traffic in 2019 from 30k to 100k page views per month. In my opinion, it's a perfect way to get started and once you master it, you can always go for something fancier.

Are you thinking about taking blogging seriously?

If you use this link (https://bit.ly/bfd-keysearch) to sign up for KeySearch, I'll earn a small commission for referring you (it helps offset the cost of my email software, which is now 🤑 thanks to the success of this course). Since I know KeySearch very well, you can always email your questions and I'll be happy to help out. Use my link and the code KSDISC for 20% off your subscription!

Now, let's use KeySearch to see how difficult it is to rank for keywords about React Router.

(Pssst: I've added a video you can watch for the next part, if you prefer to watch instead of read :) Find it here: https://www.loom.com/share/774171439d7b44c98d440810c3dc4de5)

Step 2. Niche down to a keyword you can rank for

Now, first thing you might notice is that the top 3 results for "React Router" are, well, the official website for the project. Chances are I can't (and shouldn't) outrank them for a term like "react router".

But what other topics are currently underserved about React Router, which I could write about, and rank for?

In KeySearch, I'll look for "react router":

What I can see is that it's extremely hard to rank for. But what I want to do is find some terms that are not THAT hard. And I can see two here: "react router link" and "react router typescript".

Now, 37 is not a "low score" (you can get as low as 10-20, those results will be a bright blue). But it's more attainable, and if you create multiple bits of content around React Router, you have a better chance of ranking for all of them!

If I search for "react router typescript", I can see that the content is not that great and the search results page isn't over-saturated with videos, and some of the page 1 results are from Stackoverflow instead of tutorials. I believe I can do it better :)

(Note: There are over 200 factors Google uses to rank your content, and KeySearch's proprietary "score" isn't one of them. It's just a tool made by a team of people trying to boil down a bunch of factors into a number. More advanced competitor analysis is something we can cover in the newsletter part of Blogging for Devs.).

So now I've decided, I want to try for the main keyword "react router typescript".

Step 3. Find tail keywords

Tail keywords are basically like related keywords that can help you make a more COMPLETE blog post. So if I see people search for "react router params" and "react router link", i should definitely include those in my post with e.g. sub-sections titled "How to use React Router Params with TypeScript".

It's also a chance to "double dip", just in case I might rank for a more competitive search term.

Just make a list of those related keywords as bullet points in your post for future reference. Aim for 10-20 tail keywords at a minimum, they don't all need to be sections or perfectly related to your topic.

Step 4. Write the post and include those keywords in strategic places

You should naturally use those keywords in some places, such as:

• Your meta title and description
• Your subheadlines
• Your first sentence or sentences
• As the anchor texts on internal links from your other related posts to the post you're writing
• Your image file names and alt tags (just remember the alt tag's primary use is for accessibility reasons)
• Throughout your paragraphs

Try not to sound like a robot. Once you understand how keywords work, you might see a lot of people writing robotic content to comply with "keyword best practices". So focus on quality, completeness, and showing your unique voice, alongside making the subject clear to our buddies at Google.

However, there are other important tactics for ranking besides pure quality, especially for competitive search terms (think "software development" or "tech jobs" or other popular terms).

Probably the main tactic you'll hear about is "building links" or "getting backlinks". I won't talk about it in this 7-day challenge, but getting people to link to your content is one of the most important ways to get your content to rank -- and sometimes the trickiest.

Luckily, as I will mention later, most developers don't optimize their content for SEO whatsoever, the competition is lower than you might expect.

Step 4b. External links

You should also link to websites with more resources on related topics, but not necessarily to content that is competing with you for the top spot.

For example, React Training doesn't have any content about "react router typescript". So I can "safely" link to them, as a major authority about React Router, without competing with them. This tells Google I'm a complete resource on the topic and doesn't hurt my chance at ranking. (That's because, as I just mentioned, Google uses links as a way to determine a website's authoritativeness on a topic)

(Note: As I said before, if React Training did have content on this topic, I wouldn't be writing about it in the first place. In cases like these, I'm an opportunist. So ideally you can always link out to "authority websites" on the topic you're writing about. Just think about what links your readers will find handy, and use them contextually!)

Step 5. Craft an excellent title people will want to click on

It doesn't need to be clickbait to be a compelling headline. It should be descriptive, succinct, and accurate. Here are just a few ideas for our example:

• React Router with TypeScript: The Complete Guide - Completion is important!
• How to use React Router with TypeScript - Simple and straightforward
• Step-by-step: How to use React Router with TypeScript - Promises to approach the topic in small steps
• Use React Router with TypeScript (2020 Guide) - Tells you the material is up-to-date

The reason the title is so important is a) Google uses your click through rate as a ranking factor b) If no one clicks on your post by reading the title, your effort is kind of wasted. Always write multiple headlines before deciding one!

These titles are good for "informational" content because they clearly answer the reader's question. You may want to consider different elements when creating inspirational, or more personal content. Again, we'll have to dig into headlines more in the newsletter part of Blogging for Devs.

Tool tip: One of my favorite tools for testing headlines is the Co-schedule Headline Analyzer. Honestly it doesn't work great for tech tutorial headlines (it doesn't know that "react" isn't always a verb) but you can still learn from it.

Your homework.

• Put some keywords in your idea log! To start, my tip would be to find keywords with 300-1,000 search volume and a KeySearch "Score" of 35 or less. High volume with a low difficulty score is where the magic is 🌈 Again, if you can use my link to sign up for KeySearch (https://bit.ly/bfd-keysearch), it would be a big help. KSDISC is the code for 20% off!

• Create an outline (markdown is great for this!) of your post with both head and tail keywords. And feel free to send it to me for feedback!

Look, there is a waaaaay more to SEO than this. This is one small piece of the overall puzzle. But you can start to see real results with just these 5 steps. Especially because most developers don't know SEO, so you, my friend, have a special advantage 😉

It does often take Google several months (1-6 months, sometimes longer) to rank your content, so you will need to be patient and keep writing! But the more you write, and the more interconnected the content is, the faster you can show up in search.

You got this,

@monicalent

P.S. What's the biggest question you have about SEO? Have you ever thought about SEO when writing a blog post before? I'd love to hear if you have used any tools or techniques before to make your site "search-friendly". Hit "Reply" to this and share your experience.