Summary: <p><em>We’re on to round 2 of our blogging series! Blogging is something most of us know we should be doing, but struggle to stay on top of. There are so many questions such as “what platform should I use?” and “how often do I need to blog?”. We are going to address these questions throughout our series, but join us in our Facebook group <a href="http://www.growwithusmastermind.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">www.growwithusmastermind.com</a> to start the conversation now. It’s also a great place to get support and advice when you are struggling to build your Teacher Pay Teachers businesses.</em></p> <p>I think there is one thing that more bloggers new and old seem to have questions about over anything else—SEO! We know it’s important, but it seems so overwhelming to figure out what we need to do. Just in case you aren’t familiar with the acronym yet, it stands for Search Engine Optimization. Basically, it’s what gets your website, webpage, or blog post to show up in the search engine results.</p> <p>A little of what we discussed on the podcast could apply to your TpT store, but what we’re really focused on is your blog/website.</p> <h2>Introducing our guest</h2> <p>We were super excited to have Noelle Pickering from <a href="http://maneuveringthemiddle.com">Maneuvering the Middle</a> on the podcast to share SEO tips and strategy. Noelle started her first blog years ago when it seemed everyone was being pushed into starting one. However, she only had a few posts up.</p> <p>She didn’t start to take it seriously until she spent time checking out what other industries and niches were doing. She thinks, and April and I agree, that the education niche can tend to be behind the times a little. In 2015 once she followed other blogs, like food blogs, she got the inspiration she needed to fully commit and make a long-term investment into it. She committed to writing regular blog posts, spending the money she needed to on design, and really making it work.</p> <p>Noelle mentioned something I think is worth focusing on for a minute. Any time you are investing, with your time or money, into something to grow your TpT business it’s worth giving it your all. This applies to building your email list, creating a newsletter, switching to WordPress, and everything else. If you are investing in it then you need to really commit to doing it well.</p> <h2>Best SEO tips and strategies</h2> <h4>1. Create high-quality content</h4> <p>This has been brought up before on our podcast but it comes in to play once again. You need to post quality content on your site. If you are just throwing up blog posts for the sake of it then it’s going to end up hurting your SEO because it’s not going to be valuable to your reader. Before you worry about any other SEO strategies make sure you are focused on this.</p> <p>Noelle found that this is the #1 thing that you can do in the eyes of Google. The search engine wants to deliver the most valuable answers as fast and as accurately as possible. If your site meets the needs of what readers are looking for and they stay on your site reading then it lets Google know that your page is a high-quality page. It also helps build your authority with your reader.</p> <h4>2. Choose the right topics and keywords</h4> <p>Keywords are always something that comes up when talking about SEO. Keywords are simply the words that you are focusing on in your blog post or on your webpage that your target audience is going to be looking for. They are the words that you are trying to rank for on your page or post. We are going to go further into keywords later in this post.</p> <h4>3. Keep readers on your site</h4> <p>This goes along with creating high-quality content. Google and other search engines are looking at things like your bounce rate and how long readers are staying on your site to determine if it should be showing up in the search engines. The longer reade</p>
