Driving Free SEO Traffic to Your Dog Blog
How to Drive free Search Traffic to your Dog Blog
Blogging is extremely hard, especially if you’re in a saturated niche like pets or dogs. It’s definitely not a quick way to get rich because you’ll have to wait for Google to rank your articles and sometimes your articles don’t even rank in search results. So how do you know if you’re writing the right article that will rank you within the top 5 search results when they are related to dogs? Also, how do you drive traffic to your dog posts with places like Pinterest?
Here are some cheap ways that I look for keywords that will rank in the dog blog niche. The good thing about competing in a saturated niche like dogs is that there are a ton of keywords. Your job isn’t to focus on the most popular keywords like Golden Retriever or Goldendoodle, but instead, you need to focus on long-tail money keywords like Best Onesie for Dogs or Best Food For French Bulldog With Allergies. There are tons of big websites competing for difficult keywords. If you’re just starting your pet or dog blog, chances are you won’t have enough resources to do the SEO and link building needed to compete on these difficult keywords.
Today, I will show you some easy ways to find a keyword for your dog blog. These are low-cost methods that will help you drive traffic. I have no affiliation with any of the software or social media platforms mentioned here. This blog post is simply to help you if you’re just starting your dog website.
Keywords Everywhere
Keywords Everywhere used to be a free resource, but so many people were abusing it with bots that the owners decided to make it a low-cost tool. For $10, you get 100,000 credits which is likely to last you at least 6 months. Keywords Everywhere is a way to drive SEO traffic to your dog blog.
The idea of Keywords Everywhere, is that you install it on your browser and it will show you the difficulty for ranking that keyword. Let’s take an example of Golden Retriever Puppy.
It gives an overall competition of 0.2. While that isn’t too high, I personally don’t compete on anything above 0.1 unless I am confident I can rank for the term.
Another great aspect about Keywords Everywhere is that it will show alternative keywords that you can target. This will give you ideas of long-tail keywords that you can write about for dogs.
For instance, from this list of dog keywords, I may target an article focused on “Golden Retriever Colors” or “Chocolate lab facts”. The idea of Keywords Everywhere is that it will give you some low-cost ideas of what keywords to target in the pet industry. My recommendation is to not target anything above 0.1 competition and make sure you check the SERPs before you write an idea. Keywords Everywhere isn’t always 100% accurate, so it’s always best to check the top 10 search results and make sure your domain can rank for the dog keyword.
If you run a dog blog or write about pets, the biggest platform to gain easy traffic for free is going to be on Pinterest. I’ve found that around 10% of my website traffic comes from social media platforms like Pinterest – there’s a lot of dog owners on that website!
The first thing I would do is search for dog-related Pinterest boards that have a lot of followers or pet owners. This gives you access to a large audience immediately. You’re likely going to have to start creating nice pins before you join large boards, but the idea is to become a contributor to large dog boards. It’s really not that difficult once you find them and reach out to the owners. Some of the most popular dog boards I contribute too are: #DOGS, My heart belongs to dogs, For the Dogs!, and *Dog Lovers*.
When you join a large dog-related Pinterest board, you need to create engaging pins or you won’t get any views. Long and skinny Pins work the best and you can take the content or links from your website. Creating cute pins can even drive traffic to your homepage if you choose to link them there.
Conclusion for Driving Free SEO Traffic to Your Dog Blog
If you’re keen on SEO for your dog blog, you can use Keywords Everywhere to target longtail keywords that will eventually drive traffic. The only downside is that SEO takes a while and it could be months before you see any traffic from a post. An alternative method is to drive traffic from Pinterest. Pinterest is great, but their customers are “low-value” who tend not to buy items. However, it does signal to Google that people are regularly viewing your website.
If you’re thinking of creating a dog blog, and want some general tips for a pet website, you can reach out to the owner of the websites We Love Doodles and Care Of My Dog. They will help you get on some of the large dog Pinterest boards or give you some general advice on keywords to target.