When you hear about search engine optimization, you automatically think about a business website; but, did you know that SEO is just as important for your blog! It helps get you found by consumers and brands, and drives more traffic to your blog. You should be optimizing every post for SEO to gain the most bang for your buck!
Here are my top 10 tips for optimizing your blog for SEO:
1. Have a clear concise topic
This makes writing and optimizing much easier. When you have a clear topic, you have a clear idea of what your keywords need to be. This brings me to the next tip.
2. Create & use keyword phrases for every post
These keyword phrases should clearly explain what your blog and blog posts are about and, if applicable, the problem that you are trying to solve. Think about phrases that online users would type into Google to find a blog with your topic. For example, if your blog is about training your dog. Your keywords can be:
“Break your pet’s bad behavior”... “How to Train your dog”... “Stop your dog from peeing in your house.”
They should be used in headlines, titles, title tags, meta descriptions, your intro paragraph and concluding paragraph. (Not sure what these words are? Check out my blog post on SEO Lingo) Just make sure nothing is too spammy! Keywords should flow nicely with your text.
Another Note: You should then be picking keywords that have high search volume and low competition…or as close to that combo as possible...AND never use the same keyword for any of your blog posts.
Typically a great keyword is actually a phrase of 3-4 words.
A keyword research tool that I like (that is free) is UberSuggest.com, but there are several out there and are all good in their own way.
3. Use headlines & sub-headlines
This is an easy way to use your keyword phrases, and it helps visibly organize your blog, which is good for search engines, and even better for your readers!! Make sure you are using your heading tags for these headlines and sub-headlines too. I explain how to do this in my H-tags for SEO post.
4. Use bullet points
This is another way to organize your website and make it look neat and tidy. It also signals to search engines the important information that you are trying to serve.
5. Always fill out the author and publish date
If there are areas to input data for your blog post… DO IT! Search engines do not like when data is left blank.
6. Always complete your categories and tags
These help your website visitors more easily find your posts, and they help search engines quickly figure out what your post is about and how to categorize it for indexing.
7. Title, tag, and optimize your images with variations of your keywords
By this I mean to:
Save your images/videos to the lowest file size you can without it looking grainy.
Name your file with your keyword BEFORE you upload it to you website. For example a great image title for this post would be “SEO-tips-for-bloggers”. And yes, Google likes the dashes in there.
Complete the image titles, alt text and description with keyword variations. You can typically find these fields in the image settings.
8. Your blog should be at least two paragraphs
Search engines love long articles, which is why Wikipedia always shows up in Google, but who on earth wants to read a super long article…Am I right?? So with these both in mind come up with a length that you feel comfortable with. You know your readers best, and in the end you should always be serving your readers FIRST!
9. Link out to YOUR previously published, related posts
This helps Google know what your website is about and gives some SEO juice to all of the posts that are linked.
10. Update your blog often and consistently!! This is SO important and takes time! Google NEEDS to see consistency before you start moving up in the ranks.
BONUS TIP & UPDATE:
Since I last posted this article, Google has started rolling out its mobile-first indexing; therefore, it’s super important… I repeat SUPER IMPORTANT… to make sure your website is updated for mobile!
There you have it! My top 10 SEO tips and tricks to getting your blog found by more readers!
If you like what you read, come follow me over on my Instagram account where I post tons of other tips like the ones above. I love connecting with new people!!
If you want to see exactly how I write my blog posts and how they get to the top of Google, click here to purchase my Write Better Blog Posts. This step by step video tutorial will show you my entire process that I use each time I create a post, and I've even include worksheets to help you out!