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Let me tell you something. I didn’t start taking SEO seriously for years. It was only about 4/5 years into my blogging career that I realised heck, maybe I should learn about this stuff. I’m not a very technical person and things like SEO scare me. So for that reason, I was reluctant to delve into it because quite honestly, I was worried I’d get overwhelmed. So for anyone who feels like that, here is a beginners guide to SEO for bloggers.
Photo by Daniel Fazio on Unsplash
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it means the practices you put in place on your blog to increase organic views and visibility on search engines. The better your SEO practices, the higher your blog posts will rank on Google and research shows that blog posts featured on the first page of Google get a whopping 95% of clicks.
With hundreds of thousands of bloggers out there, all trying to achieve something similar, Google are inundated with links and the further up the order the link, logically, the more likely it is to get viewed. There are plenty of posts to help with SEO – this SEO guide can help – but here’s a beginners guide to SEO for bloggers.
Beginners Guide To SEO for Bloggers:
Link back to other content you’ve written
This is a super easy and effective way to help with SEO, simply linking back to your older content, where relevant. It boosts your SEO, boosts your DA score (more on that next) and helps you generate an authority on certain subjects where you can interlink your content together.
Top tip: Don’t interlink using the anchor text “here” or “this post”. Always use keywords or full titles to link your blog posts with. Google and search engines can’t recognize “here” or “this post” as keywords.
Related: Why You Should Be Internally Linking Within Your Blog Posts
Work on your DA score
DA stands for Domain Authority and your DA score means how highly your site is ranked on search engines. It’s common knowledge that brands want to work with bloggers with a higher DA so it’s worth doing some things in order to help yours out. Linking back to old content, as stated above, is one way. You can also up the amount you’re commenting on other blogs, sort out all your broken links and starting your posts with writing, not an image.
Related: DA Score – What Is It? Why Is It Useful? And How Do We Improve It?
Make your post shareable for others
Not only will other people sharing your posts gain you extra views, it also shows Google that your post is relevant. No offence but a lot of us are lazy and we want things as easy as possible, so having clear shareable buttons on your posts will help make it super swift for others to share your work!
Use headings where possible
A bit like I’m doing in this post, using headings makes your posts more digestible and reader friendly. Better formatted and more useful in the eyes of Google. Big chunks of next put people off reading – me included – and also makes your blog content LESS accessible to those with a mental disability that might make digesting text harder for them.
Tip: Make sure you research how to correctly use H-tags. H2 tags should be used as heading titles and H3 tags should be used to break up H2 tags. You shouldn’t be using H1 tags throughout your post.
Related: How To Write an Amazing Blog Post
Write a minimum of 300 words
Google likes posts which are on the longer side, they figure that they’re more useful and professional so blog posts certainly should be more than 300 words long. I mean, we bloggers have got a lot to say, so chances are they will be but if you’re looking to improve your SEO then try and refrain from whacking out a ton of posts which are all short. Quality over quantity. Long form content prevails in this case.
Utilize keyword research
Keyword research is SO important for SEO. So, so, so important. And it can be an absolute game changer for boosting your blog traffic. But it’s not about picking a keyword out of thin air that you think fits your blog. Keywords need to be 2 things:
- Highly searched for
- With low competition
And this balance is really hard to find, unless you have the tools and knowledge of how to do it. The Yoast plug-in is a great place to start with SEO and keywords as it tells you where your keywords should be and if you’re using your keywords too much. But I’d highly recommend grabbing this ebook:
Nele from The Naviagtio is a MASTER at SEO and keyword research. This eBook is perfect for beginners and a great resources to supplement this beginners guide to SEO for bloggers. She teaches you exactly how to search for keywords that work for YOU in a beginner friendly manner. You can grab her Keyword Research eBook here! And if you’re ready to delve deeper into SEO for bloggers, grab her SEO for Bloggers eBook here!