Simple, easy, free SEO using a blog
SEO- Search Engine Optimization, is the art of getting your website to rank higher in Google and Bing results. Here's an easy way to do it.
If you have any kind of website that you want people to actually be able to find, then getting to the top of search engine rankings is a key part of helping people find your site. Search Engine Optimization, aka SEO, is the art of moving your site’s listing to the top spot in the search results on Google, Bing, Duck Duck Go, and any other search engine.
I’ve been blogging, publishing lots of posts, since late 2008. I’ve written and published well over 2,800 total blog posts since November 2008. I’m not talking posts with one paragraph and a photo, I write quite a bit, probably averaging 500 words or more, in nearly every post. In late 2008, I started writing a blog about my days as a BMX freestyle industry guy in the 1980’s, and have written about several other subjects in the 16 years since. I had no idea what I was doing when I started. In 2009, I started actually learning about blogging itself, and that included figuring out how to get my blogs to the top of Google’s search results. That’s when I first heard the term Search Engine Optimization or SEO.
Early on, I found a really simple way to get virtually any website name or blog title to the top two or three spots in a few weeks, and usually lock the site at #1 in two to three months. Yeah, I could build an online course and charge you $29.95 for this info, but I won’t. I’m just going to tell you my technique, and then explain how to do it after that. Here’s my technique:
Write one sentence about your new website at the bottom of a post on your current blog, and link that sentence to your new website, the one you want to get real traffic to. Wait. That’s it. What if you don’t have a blog already? Start a very simple blog about almost anything, we’ll call it your “SEO Blog.” Once you have 20 posts, write a sentence on the bottom of each post, link those sentences to your new blog. This will give your new website or blog 20 back links. That’s it.
This technique is free, takes a little bit of work, and usually takes one to two months to get your new website to show up #1 to #3 in search results, when you type the name of the new website into a search engine. Usually within three months, your new site is locked in the #1 position. That’s it. 20 back links from your SEO Blog, and a couple of months, will get the job done most of the time. Here’s my Freestyle BMX Tales blog, which was most active back in 2016-2017. You’ll notice that I have links to one or two other blogs at the bottom the first several posts.
Why do you want to link an old blog, or your SEO blog, to your new website or blog? Because back links, or links to your new website, are seen as “votes” for the new website by the search engines. I’ve found that simply putting 20 real links to a new blog or website is enough to get the search engines attention, and bring your new site to the front page of results over time, and then to move it up, ultimately aiming for the number one spot.
Here’s how this technique works if you don’t have a blog already. You start a simple blog, using a platform like Blogger. You can use any blog platform you want, Blogger is my personal favorite. If you have a Google account, you can start a new blog in 5 to 10 minutes using that account, because Blogger is owned by Google. You can make that blog as simple or complex as you like, and you can make it about almost anything.
Let’s using fishing as an example, for some who likes to fish. You can upload one photo of a fish you’ve caught, and then write one or two sentences about it. For example, “Here’s a photo of a 14 inch rainbow trout I caught while on a fishing trip to the Payette River in Idaho last summer.” It can be as simple as that. Virtually any subject. Upload a photo, write a sentence or two, then hit the “Publish” button. Do one post a day for 20 days, and then you have a blog online, with 20 posts on it. This is 10-15 minutes worth of work a day. If you don’t know how to do this, go on YouTube and search, “How to start a blog on Blogger” (or whatever platform). That’s how we learn new skills these days people, the “University of YouTube.” These videos walk us through each step of each new thing or technology we need to learn. And it’s FREE!
Now, ideally, if you are starting a new website or blog, and you want it either earn money, or you want to get a lot of people looking at it, then you should start promoting the new idea, meaning the brand name, six months or a year before the website or blog debuts on the web. So if you’re starting a new online store, making a website for your small business, or maybe starting a blog to promote your writing, art, or some other skill set, you should start promoting six months to a year earlier. Getting traffic on the internet takes time for new projects. This is one huge mistake that many brick and mortar businesses make when taking their business online, even now in 2024. Start building and promoting the brand name of the new business or website months before the website goes live.
In my blog SEO technique here, you use your existing blog, or build a simple “SEO blog” to add links to your new site. You don’t need to buy back links to your new site, you do not need to leave SPAM links to your site in the comments section on other people’s websites. Just make your own little blog, and let it sit out there on the web. It doesn’t matter if anyone reads it. Then, two or three months before your new site is going to open up for business, or go live, you go to your SEO blog, to the first post. You go into the “draft” screen of that post, to make changes to the text. At the bottom of the draft version you simply add something like, “I have a new online store opening up next month, check it out at: (URL to your new site).” Then you link that whole sentence to the URL of your new website or blog. Then you hit “Update” for that blog post. So that sentence in the bottom of that post becomes a link to your new website.
Do this with 5 posts on your SEO blog, in one day. Then do 5 more the next day. In four days, you now have 20 legitimate links to your new site. Within a couple of days, each search engine, Google, Bing, Duck Duck Go, and any others, will begin to find these links to your new site. Don’t create all the links at one time, then the search engines may think it’s a spam site. To oversimplify it, the search engines see each of these links, from a legitimate blog, as a “vote” that someone likes your new website. The search engines want the popular sites high in their rankings for each subject or niche. Combined with day to day promotion of your new site, just 20 links will help your new site steadily rise up the search results towards the #1 spot.
Once your new website or blog is live, you also need to promote it in social media or offline ways day to day. In my mind, I consider the 20 blog links as “doing SEO,” and day to day promotion of the new site as “promotion.” Both of these work together to help your new website move up in the search engine results, which helps people find your website much easier. That gets you views, and hopefully sales, if it’s a business website.
For example, if you are starting a new online store, you want to promote it daily. To do this, you make posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest, TikTok, and/or whatever social media you use. You write a social media post, or make a video, and say, “Hey, check out my new online store at (URL for your new site).”
For my personal blogs, every post I write, I put a link on my Twitter (X) feed, and I put posts on my Facebook page, and in 3 or 4 Facebook groups. That’s it. Once I learned this technique (using my old blogs, I didn’t have to create an “SEO blog”) to put 20 links to each new blog, I’ve been doing it ever since. On average, my new blog title will get to the top spot in Google search results in about two months.
There is one other aspect to moving up in Google rankings. You actually have to have something worth looking at or reading on your new website. If it’s not very good, or you’re trying to SPAM people, this technique won’t help you. Sites don’t have to be broadly popular to everyone, they just have to be good, quality content in that niche.
Now, there’s A LOT more to promoting blogs and websites, a lot of nuances, and I’ll most likely be writing more those ideas here on Substack in the future. But this basic idea of just putting 20 links to your new site from an old blog or an “SEO Blog” is incredibly powerful, and really simple, once you learn the basics. And it’s free, which is always good. Now, if you have an idea for a new blog, or for an online store or business of some kind, get to work and make it happen.
There are no paid links in this post.