I was about twelve years old when my techie computer programming parents turned to me and said, “Amy, we just got you your domain name. It’s time to start blogging so you can rank on Google someday.”

Boy was I lucky to be raised by total nerds.

Anyways, since then I’ve spent the past decade or so blogging on ye olde blog here at AmySuto.com, spinning tales of what I’m up to and sharing the knowledge I’ve learned along the way.

And now, it’s time for me to share all of my secrets when it comes to the magical witchcraft of ~search engine optimization~ aka SEO for blog posts and articles. But before we even dive into that, let’s start with why the hell even bother with blogs anyways.

What is a Blog Even Good For?

As it turns out, you don’t have to be a sultry narrator of a Sex In the City-esque show to get benefits out of blogging.

Here’s a huge secret: your blog is the best free marketing tool ever. If your website has a blog, people will probably find one of your articles on Google while searching for something they’re looking for. Without having to pay a dime — bam! You’ve got traffic (the good kind, not the LA kind!)

If you’re a realtor or therapist or any kind of service provider, a blog helps to share your expertise with potential clients. When we’re making decisions about who to work with, we want to get a sense of who someone is and what they’re best at, and blogs are a great way to capture your unique personality while sharing your superpowers.

If you run a Shopify store or sell products, a blog is a fantastic way to announce new product releases, share behind-the-scenes content from your warehouse, and your company’s story. Now more than ever, we care about how our stuff is being made: story matters when it comes to sales. And every blog post you write is just another entrypoint that a new customer can find you on Google.

For me, this blog has been a huge source of incoming traffic. I’ve gotten leads for my own freelance writing and also I’ve met some really awesome folks who have found my work on here. Sometimes when you shout into the void… it shouts back? In a really friendly way?

But in order for people to find your blog on 100 vegan nutritional yeast recipes, you’ve got to make sure it’s properly optimized so that Google and other search engines can direct traffic your way.

Search Engine Optimization = Witchcraft, But for Google’s Algorithm

When I wrote my article on how I ghostwrite memoirs, I made sure to include the keywords I was targeting was in every part of my article, from my article title, subheadings, and topic sentences. I even included my keywords in photo descriptions and the article’s metadata. If you’re blogging on WordPress like I am, I would recommend checking out plugins like Yoast that help automatically check and see if you’re hitting all the marks for the keywords you’re targeting in your article.

All that SEO legwork really pays off: from that one article alone, I’ve booked several jobs from people who found me on Google who were interested in hiring a memoir ghostwriter, which was one of the reasons why I wrote that blog post. See? SEO witchcraft does work!

But how does one go about targeting an audience?

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