Search engine traffic is one of the best type of traffic to have coming to your blog. Why is this so? This is called targeted traffic because people search for things related to your blog, and your blog becomes a target for them. These type of people is called targeted traffic because your content appeals to their needs.

Targeted search engine traffic is great to have as it can be plenty, and the great thing about it is that it’s free.

In order to get targeted search engine traffic to your blog you don’t have to be a SEO expert or take any courses in search engine optimization. You just have to apply the tips that I will provide in this article.
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Get Indexed By Google

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There are millions perhaps billions of searches conducted on Google per day (not sure of the current stats). No matter what niche your blog falls in someone is searching for keywords linking to your blog. So the only thing that you have to do is have your blog indexed into the Google search engine results for the keywords best describing your blog.

• How To Index Blog On Google?

First thing that you have to do is install the Google SiteMap plugin which automatically generates a sitemap for you.

Login to the Google Webmaster Tools and you can suit your sitemap there so that your blog will be indexed faster.

Next you go to the Google Add Url page and submit your blog their.

With the Google Sitemap Plugin each time you publish a new blog post Google Bot will be notified to crawl your blog to seek for any changes made. When the Google Bot finds the new blog post that you have made, it will take further steps to include it in search results the next time someone searches for something related to that topic.

For more info on how to get your articles indexed on Google, here is a great article that I wrote: How To Index Your Articles On Google Search

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Keywords

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The useage of the right keywords on our blog plays a very important factor for getting traffic from search engines. Using the right keywords which best describes our blog or for the article that we write is one of the best things to do in order to accumulate targeted traffic. Not using the right keywords on our blog can make our blog lose out on the best traffic that there is to be had.

When using keywords we don’t just want to use single words which describes our blog. We should think like other people and use long-tail keywords. Using phrases which describes our blog is also another great way to do it.

For Example: words that can be used to describe my blog are – blog, blogging, wordpress, tutorial.

But I use phrases such as – wordpress blogging tips, wordpress tutorial, how to start a blog, free blogging tips, how to make money blogging.

Why did I use phrases? This is because I target the keywords that people search for by using the phrases in my keyword meta tag area. Using phrases for keywords give you a better chance for getting more search engine traffic. When writing an article you have to think about the words and phrases that people will search for if they want to find your article, and use them as keywords to better target these people.

Another great thing to do is research the keywords so that you can be more accurate at choosing the right keywords. I recommend you using the Google Keyword Tool to do so. It’s free and easy to use.
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SEO URLs

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Using SEO friendly URLs on your blog/website plays a big part in getting search engine traffic.

SEO URLs is basically having keywords or phrases embedded inside the URL. This will help you rank better for a particular keyword, depending on how great your content is.

For example: A SEO friendly URL would be structured like this http://mysite.com/welcome-to-my-first-blog-post

And a non SEO friendly URL would look like this http://mysite.com/?p=1234

How To Setup SEO Friendly URL In WordPress

Step 1: Go to the ‘Customize Permalink Structure’ page in your WordPress Admin : Dashboard>Options>Permalinks

Step 2: Then select the ‘Custom Structure’ Option. We only wanted to list the Post Name and Post ID number in the URL, so we customized it as /%postname%/%post_id%/

A full list of customization options is available at WordPress.org/Using_Permalinks

Step 3: Don’t save the new Permalink Structure yet! Before updating your Permalink Structure, install and activate the Permalink Redirect WordPress Plugin. This lets you bypass mod_rewrites or changes to your .htaccess file.

Permalink Redirect WordPress Plugin replies a 301 permanent redirect, if requested URL is different from entry’s (or archive’s) permalink. It is used to ensure that there is only one URL associated with each blog entry, therefore eliminating dupicate content issues.

Step 4: Go back to your ‘Customize Permalink Structure’ page in the WP Admin and hit the ‘Update Permalink Structure’ button.

Now all of the posts on your blog will have the new SEO keyword friendly URL structure and all incoming links which point to the old URL’s will be directed to the new optimized URL’s.

As an added bonus, if you change the Post Slug in your blog posts while Writing new posts or Managing older ones, the URL will reflect the keywords in your Post Slug and not the entire title given to a post. If you notice, I’ve simplified the URL for this post to read “/seo-friendly-url-structure/”.

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Headlines

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Headlines plays the one of the most important part for your artile when it comes to getting search engine traffic. Most of the times using keywords in an article headline gives great outcome when ranking for search engine results.

The same can be said of headlines just like the keyword. You have to think of what people are typing into search engine and use it as your headline. When people are searching, they don’t just type in one word and hit the search button. They are more likely to type in a phrase which best describes what they are looking for. Using these phrase as your headline can make them come straight to your blog after the search engine results comes up.

I think you might have remembered my Google Adsense Tips article. If you notice with the title of this article, (which is known as the headline), I didn’t just put Google Adsense Tips. Even though time and again people do search for the phrase Google Adsense Tips. But rather I used How To Increase Your Google Adsense Revenue which gets tons of search engine traffic rather that the first set of phrase.

I made sure to use phrases which people are typing into the search engines so that I can better target them.
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Group Discussion

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What other tips and tricks do you use to get traffic from search engines?