If you’re a blogger, the likely chance is, you’ve heard of SEO. You probably already understand the importance of SEO and how it can help grow your blog/business. But, do you know how to optimize your blog posts to make them more SEO friendly?
What does SEO stand for?
SEO – Search Engine Optimization.
Enabling the search engine to find your blog/business easily for it’s audience.
Many bloggers fail to take advantage of the enormous marketing potential of their blogs via using SEO the correct way, or even not using it at all.
According to recent research, many bloggers leave the commitment to their blog quiet early on in the process. Studies suggest around 70% fail to fully launch their blog into a business and end up not posting regular content for over several years.
The key is to provide fresh, relevant content and perform basic blog post optimization on a daily or weekly basis. Working on your blog like a business will reap the rewards in the coming months and years.
Here are six easy search engine optimization (SEO) tips using keywords, which can help your blog get noticed so you don’t become one of the 70%.
5 super helpful SEO tips using keywords
Before we go into these tips, you need to know that there are two types of SEO optimization category’s. On page SEO and Off page SEO.
1. Research
For anyone that starts a blog or a business, you’ll know how important keyword research is. A keyword is a specific term which will define your blog post. It will enable the audience to reach your post by simply searching for that one word or phrase.
This keyword can be short tail or long tail. Long tail keywords are recommended widely as they are tailored more specifically to your content.
Keyword research is essential for on page optimization.
Being honest, your probably already including keywords without realizing it simply by providing valuable content on a topic. However, with deeper research you can find more related keywords relevant to your blog post.
There are several tools out there which can help simplify this process, so you’re not sitting around scratching your head looking for the right keywords. Tools such as, Ahrefs, Semrush, Google Adwords all offer great services that allow you to find keywords related to your topic and even spy on your competition to see what words and phrases they are targeting to bring traffic to their sites.
2. Utilize keywords correctly
Once you have found a couple of targeted keywords which match your post, it is important to place them where they will have the most impact for humans and search engine crawlers indexing your content. Ideally using the keyword phrase around 6-8 times in your text is a good way of being noticed when your keyword term is searched for. Don’t overstuff your text with the same keyword either. Stuffing occurs if your keyword is found more than 15-20 times in the same text. This can get your post penalised by Google.
You can include keywords in the following places:
- Title (100% required)
- Any Headings and subheadings
- Introductory sentence (First paragraph of text)
- Concluding paragraph
- Anchor text (text you hyperlink to other related pages on your site)
- Title tags and meta descriptions
Top Tip: If you use the WordPress platform to blog on, you can install the free Yoast plugin. It guides you on where to place your keywords and once the light shows green, your post is good to be published.
3.Image Optimization
Any images on your blog post, including the featured image should also contain the keyword. Whenever you upload a photo to your blog, be sure to include keywords in the file name and fill out the alternate text field with a brief, keyword rich description of the photo.
4.Give Reference to other links
You must have heard the term “backlinks”- these are super powerful. The more you receive for your blog, the better and higher it will rank in Google’s eyes.
Always link back and refer other bloggers or sites when you mention them across your platform. This is called referencing. If lucky you may get a backlink back when referencing, which will boost your ranking on Google and can bring you higher in the search engine results.
5. Use social media to share your blog posts
Using social media can boost your traffic for your small blog business pretty drastically once you have an audience built. You can use platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or other social media sites to create connections. If posting daily seems like hard work, you can use a post scheduler to post daily for you on each platform. Tools such as Hootsuite, Buffer and Later all do the job brilliantly.
By following these 5 simple SEO tips, you can have your keywords rank in Google giving you higher rankings in SERPS and increased web traffic.
Keywords is only one part of SEO. SEO consists of many factors which are vital for any blog business. Keep using keywords and posting fantastic content and you will surely be on your way to getting a better position on Google which will then make the other SEO factors easier to achieve.
Related: How to use social media to BOOST your blog traffic
Post Tags: seo for blogs 2019, Keywords blogger, blogging for seo success, how to write seo friendly blog posts, seo plugin for blogger, blog seo checklist, seo blogs for beginners
