There are a lot of search engine optimization (SEO) experts online offering SEO blog tips.
In fact, there’s probably more advice out there than you care to consume, and it would be really easy for you to go down the rabbit hole and end up spending so much time attending to your optimization that you forget to focus on your content.
That would be a mistake. Focusing on the needs of your ideal customer or client and making sure that you offer solutions to his or her problems should always be job #1.
That said, there are things you can do to make sure that your blog ranks well in search. In my last blog post, I focused on 5 Low-Tech Tips to Make Your Blog Rank Higher in Google.
In this post, I want to add 7 more tips to the list. A few of these are a little more techy than the previous list, but nothing super complicated.
So, let’s dive into it…
7 SEO Tips for Blogs
Tip #1. Include Keywords in Headings and Sub-Headings.
The first three items on this list all talk about keywords. Obviously, you can’t intelligently use keywords unless you’ve identified the ones you want to use first.
So, let’s flash back to my previous post. In that list of 5 Low-Tech Tips, item #2 (right behind Start with Your Ideal Customer Avatar) was Find Long-Tail Niche Keywords. I’ll be going into using a keyword research tool in more depth in an upcoming post, but for now you don’t need to know how to do anything fancy.
Just use a keyword research tool like Google’s Keyword Planner research tool, or Wordtracker, or my personal favorite, Ubersuggest. Plug in the topic of your post and run the tool to find out what search terms people are actually using surrounding that topic. Choose two or three of the best ones (medium to high search volume, low to medium competition) that fit with your topic.
Now you’re set to use Tip #1 (and #2 and #3 below). I mentioned in my previous post that two of the best places to use your keyword(s) is in your post title and in the first 100 words of your post.
I’m going to expand on those recommendations here. It’s not only important to use your keyword(s) in your H1 heading, but also in your sub-headings (H2 and H3). This is because Google and other search engines “read” the content of your post differently than a human reader.
The search engines don’t start at the top and read word-for-word to the bottom of the page. The algorithms they use are interested in quickly determining what your post is all about so they can refer your post to people looking for relevant keywords. They do this by privileging certain parts of your post over others—headings and sub-headings over body text, for instance.
In the name of full transparency, the keywords I identified for this post are “SEO for blogs,” “SEO tips for blogs,” “SEO blog tips,” and “SEO friendly blog.” You’ll notice that I used both “SEO for blogs” and “SEO friendly blog” in my title. It’s not often that you can work two keywords into one title!
I also worked “SEO tips for blogs” into my sub-heading above and “SEO blog tips” into the first 100 words of my body text. So, I can be pretty confident that the search engines will show this post to people who write blogs and are interested in learning how to use SEO to get their posts to rank better (the audience I was shooting for).
The takeaway here is to help the search engines out. Use your chosen keyword(s) in your headers and sub-headers so a quick scan tells them what your post is all about. This will help them put your post in front of the right readers.
Tip #2. Include Keywords in Your Meta-Descriptions.
Another place you’ll want to use your keyword(s) is in your post’s meta-description.
What is a meta-description? It’s that short, 1-3 sentence blurb you see underneath the title of a search result. Most blogging software programs have boxes built into either the toolbar or post formatting options somewhere, or you can use a plug-in like Yoast or All In One SEO (the one I use), which also gives you a place to enter your title and meta-description.
The key here is to use one or more of your keywords in your meta-description to sum up what your post is all about. This will help Google identify that your post is indeed about those keywords, which again helps them to get your post in front of the right people.
Here’s my meta-description for this post: “SEO for Blogs” (title): “If you blog, you’re probably constantly scrounging for SEO blog tips. If so, you’ll want to scarf up these 7 tips for creating an SEO friendly blog.” See? I used three of my keywords in that meta-description. Easy peasy.
One sidenote, though. Don’t just dash off any description that includes your keyword(s). Also pay attention to writing it in a way that will catch a reader’s attention (by using humor or curiosity, for example). After all, getting your post’s listing on page one of Google is only part of the job. You also need to get people to want to click on your listing. No click, no traffic.
Tip #3. Include Keywords in the Alt Text for Your Images.
Yet another place you want to use your keywords is in the alt text for your post’s images.
If you aren’t familiar with alt text, it’s the language that describes the content of an image. It’s like closed captioning for your images, as the technology visually impaired people use to read websites picks up on this text and tells the reader what the image is all about.
If you download an image from a stock photo site, for example, there will be text already attached to the image that describes the image. But just because the photographer or the photo site thought that this language described the image accurately, they probably aren’t going to use your keyword(s) in their description. That’s up to you.
So, when you add the image to your media library for your site, be sure to go into the image and replace the original text for the image with descriptive language that includes your keyword(s).
Why go through all this trouble? Well, because Google and other search engines “read” that text and privilege it over the body text in your post. So again, if you want people to see your post, make it easy for the search engines to tell what your post is about.
By the way, the alt text for the featured image at the top of this post was originally “Creative SEO Backdrop,” but I changed it to “SEO Tips for Blogs“ to fit the content of the post. See how that works?
To sum up what I’ve said in the previous post and this one about keyword placement, you should look for opportunities to use keywords in your
- headline,
- sub-headings,
- page title,
- meta-descriptions,
- alt text, and
- the first 100 words of your body text.
Now, you may be thinking that following this advice may lead to your post sounding repetitive. And it might if you don’t guard against it.
I would recommend using two or three keyword phrases, not just one, so you have a little variety. Maybe use your main keyword in your headline and meta-description, another one in one of your sub-headings and alt text, and another one in the first 100 words of your body text. Your goal is for your post to read naturally while still incorporating your keywords in multiple places.
Tip #4: Include Relevant Internal Links in Your Posts.
OK, let’s switch gears and talk about links.
The search engines like to see links in your posts, and they reward you for including them—if they’re used correctly.
One kind of link the search engines reward is internal links from one of your posts or pages to others on your site (like I did in this post when I referred back to my previous post about SEO for blogs).
There are several reasons it’s a good idea to use internal links in your blog posts, including:
- When the search engines crawl your site, the internal links tell the search bots which content is related to which other content, meaning they can create a more accurate site map.
- For your human site visitors, internal links help them navigate from one thing they’re reading to other content that’s logically related. This internal structure shows that you have a “big picture” view of your field and understand how one thing relates to another, which positions you as an authority.
- Since site visitors who follow internal links from one piece of content to another tend to stay on your site longer, this reduces your bounce rate, which tells the search engines that people find your site worth spending time on.
- If you’re selling products or services on your site (probably 99% of you reading this are either selling products or services, or both), the longer you can keep a site visitor engaged on your site, the higher the chances that he or she will eventually be converted into a customer or client.
One tip: use natural language for your anchor text (the text part of the link) and avoid spammy language such as “get it now!” or “click here.” And, if one of your keywords would sound natural in the spot, use it for your anchor text. SEO bonus points!
Tip #5: Link Out to Relevant Influential Sites.
The other kind of links that Google and other search engines like to see in your posts are links out to influential websites (you’ll notice that I have multiple external links in this post).
If you use statistics, link to the source article. If you quote an expert, link to the web page where you found the quote. If you reference another blog as being an authority on the topic you’re writing about, link to the blog.
Such external links tell the search engines that you’ve done your homework and that you’re not just spouting a bunch of baseless opinions—and the search engines will reward you with a higher ranking.
Not only that, the owners of the sites you link to may notice your inbound link, read your stuff, and may link to some of your content in the future, which could significantly boost your traffic.
Tip #6: Optimize Your Images for Faster Loading.
Google is pretty smart. They know that the average website browser has a very short attention span and that anything that delays the loading of a web page for more than a few seconds is likely to lead the browser to click away to something else.
As a result, Google privileges web pages that load quickly over those that take a while to load.
One of the biggest culprits in slow load time is large photos. If you regularly use stock photos for your website, download the medium-sized version of the photo instead of the large or extra-large version (that’s what I did for the featured image for this post). This will cut down on your load time significantly.
Another way to increase your page speed is to use compression software like Squoosh.app to make your images smaller without losing quality.
In addition to large photos, the other biggest culprit in slow load times is videos that open automatically. Set all your videos on “pause” so site visitors have to click on them to play them. This will shorten your load time.
Tip #7: Use Social Media to Link to Your Posts.
When you post on your blog, don’t neglect to post on your social media channels and let people there know about your post, with a link back to your site.
This is a good practice for several reasons. For example, you may have more followers on your social media channels than you have opt-ins to your mailing list. Plus, the people who follow you on a social media channel may not want to be on your mailing list, but they might still be interested enough in a particular piece of content to click over to read it—and once they show up, there’s a chance they might be converted to a customer or client.
But, for SEO purposes, there’s another important reason you want to link to social media: Google and the other search engines like it and allocate more weight to sites that include such connections.
You can be sure that, once I post this blog post, I’ll go to LinkedIn (my main social channel) and post about it.
Conclusion
I hope you’ve found today’s post informative. With some basic keyword research, some strategic placement of your keywords, a smart linking strategy, and a coordinated web/social media approach, you can go a long way toward getting your posts to rise in the search rankings.
But let me just circle back here at the end to Tactic #1 from my previous SEO blog post: Start with Your Ideal Customer Avatar.
It’s easy to get caught up in all the SEO mumbo-jumbo and techy tricks. Don’t let that happen to you. Learn these kinds of tips so you can be effective in search, but always keep your eyes on the prize: understanding the people you’re trying to help, empathizing with their problems, and offering real solutions to solve those problems.
If you do that and do it consistently, your audience will find you, whether you ever become an SEO wizard or not. And if you then add a little SEO wizardry to the mix, true blogging magic can happen!
If you have comments, questions, reality checks, or even rants to share, just leave us a note below.
