There are 2 key components to use SEO to create free traffic for your wordpress blog. In this article you will learn the basics of how SEO works and what tools you can use in your wordpress blog to maximize your traffic from the search engines.

It's this simple. If you want to be successful online you have to have traffic to your site. There are free ways to get traffic and there are ways to pay money to get traffic. Which kind of traffic do you want? If you said 'free traffic' then keep reading.

The main place to get free traffic is from search engines like Google, YouTube, Yahoo, etc... The way you get free traffic from these search engines is by ranking highly in places where people are searching for information.

It's like this. When people go to Google and search on any topic, you want your wordpress blog to be at the top of the list for that search. If your site is on the top of the list, you get the most traffic. It's that simple

WHAT IS SEO?

So the way you get to the top of the list is through SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. This means that the posts & pages of your blog are setup in a way that demonstrates that your page is relevant to what people are searching for.

It all comes down to RELEVENCE.

When you use Google, what makes them the number one search engine is the way they provide you with relevant content. Google is really good at providing a selection of websites that are relevant to what you are searching for.

If you want to be one of the top sites you have to be perceived as the most relevant for that search. The following core components will help you optimize your site.

KEY COMPONENT #1 - Onpage Optimization

Onpage optimization means that you make the individual pages of your website relevant to one specific keyword phrase. One of the most misunderstood concepts that I find is that people tend to think that you want to use as many keywords as possible on a page. It's simply NOT true.

In your wordpress blog, you want to make sure that each post has its own keyword phrase. So if you wrote an article about "puppy dog food". You would want to optimize the whole post with that ONE phrase.

The key places you want your keyword phrase "puppy dog food" to show up are the title, the body, the description, keywords, and tags. Don't try to game Google by "stuffing" keywords into the body of the post. Typically you want your keywords to show up no more than 5% or Google may start penalizing your post.

If I were to guess based on my experience, I would say that your onpage optimization is about 20% of your optimization strategy. So don't get too hung up on finding the exact percentage in your posts. Just write normally and reference your keyword a few times and you should be good.

Key Component #2 - Offpage Optimization

Offpage optimization includes everything that is NOT on your website. This mainly refers to your link building strategy.

There are two things you want to focus on for your offpage optimization. They are the Number and the Quality of your links.

NUMBER OF LINKS

You want to get the most links possible to your site. A few free ways to get inbound links are article marketing, leaving comments on other people's blogs, commenting in other forums related to your blog, and many more. Get as many links as you can, but avoid purchasing links or short cutting the process as you will likely be penalized for that also.

QUALITY OF LINKS

There are two things to look for in quality links. The first is to get your links from "high page rank sites". Sites with high page rank are considered "authority" sites, and so when they link to you it counts more. If you want to learn more about page rank just search Google for a definition.

The second part of creating quality links to your site is to use something called "anchor text". Anchor text is a link to your site that uses plain English instead of listing the url address. If you have ever clicked the words "CLICK HERE".... that is what anchor text.

Here's the important thing to understand... make your anchor text your keyword phrase. So if you published an article online you would want the link people click to your site to read 'Puppy Dog Food". This tells the search engines what that page is relevant to.

In summary, you want to make sure that each post or page on your wordpress blog is optimized for just one keyword phrase. You do this by putting the phrase in the title, description, body, tags, and keywords of your posts and pages. Secondly optimize your links coming into your site by getting links from sites with high page rank and using anchor text.