(Case Study) How to Get Your Articles Found in Search Engines

I thought I’d share a quick case study of a post I wrote this week about how to write a productive to-do list. The post quickly got listed as #1 on Google (and #2 on Yahoo) for my term. Here’s the video:

I would consider what I did in the video above to be the lazy way to get your articles found in the search engines. It took me no more than an extra 5 minutes to look up the keywords and check for competition on Google.

Here are the steps I followed:

Step 1: Pick Your Topic & Search Keywords

When I set down to write the blog post in question I knew what topic I wanted to write about so I headed over to the WordTracker free keyword tool and did a quick search. I came across the term ‘how to write productive to-do list’ and decided it was perfect. Then, I hopped on over to Google and entered the term with quotes to see: a) how many results show up (my competition), b) how many of the results are actually targeted (shown by bolding the exact matches).

Then, I used the keyword phrase in my post title and within the content. I named my image something relevant and away I went.

Step 2: Optimize Your Content

Since I had already written my blog post I went back to make sure it was optimized by making sure the keyword phrase was naturally included in the following ways:

• Page Title – That’s right across the top of the internet browser.
• Page URL.
• Image Names – I named my image a ‘my to-do list’.
• Internal Links – My blog automatically creates links to the post (see my main page). I also gave myself an extra internal link today (see up top).
• In Page Content – I went back through what I had written to make sure that the term was found in relevant places, naturally.

Step 3: Promote Your Article or Post

It’s really important to promote your article or blog post after you write it. Most people stop here but if you do be warned you have less a chance to get your articles found in the search engines. External links count!

Here’s what I did to promote my post:

• Sent an email out to my list.
• Posted to facebook and twitter.

Other ways to get external links to promote your articles or posts:

• Guest blog with bio link direct to your content to be ranked.
• YouTube video with link to article.
• Upload a document to Scribd.com with a link within in.
• Upload a document to SlideShare.com with a link within in.

Some of the sites you promote your content too might not give you a link that Google follows but that’s ok as long as it is reaching your market and drawing attention. You never know who might pick up your link and blog about your site!

Angela