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5 Simple SEO Tips When You Are Starting Your First Blog
SEO there I’ ve said it, it was something I totally avoided for so long. My eyes would glaze over as Search Engine Optimisation sounded so technical.
What is SEO or Search Engine Optimisation
SEO is the process of optimising your blog so that search engines such as Google, Pinterest, Bing, Amazon for example will want to show it at the top result for organic searches of a certain keyword or to answer a question that is being asked.
If you want your blog to rank well, you will need to make sure that some key areas of your blog are well optimised.
Here are 5 Steps that you can implement to make your content more SEO ready.
1. Master Keyword Research
2. Know what on page and off page SEO really is
3. Make your content SEO friendly
4. Start Link Building
5. Learn about User Experience
I know that some of these may sound rather technical but I am going to show you some great places that you can go to for free that will teach you Search Engine Optimisation in easy to follow steps.
SEO is a blogging strategy that I am still learning, but I can help you by showing you what I have found useful.
If you are wondering
How to Learn SEO
Or
More importantly if you are thinking.
Should You Even Learn SEO?
Here’ s why I think it is important to know some SEO basics.
Yes, you can pay someone to do your SEO for you but how will you know whether what they have implemented is any good.
Just because you pay for SEO does not mean that you will suddenly rank well in the search engines either.
SEO takes time and Google is like a mystical beast with many unknown qualities.
*This post may contain affiliate links, which means I’ ll receive a commission if you purchase through my links, at no extra cost to you. Please read full disclosure for more information*
Key Things I started to do to improve my SEO
At the end of 2020, I had decided to focus on Pinterest as a tool to gain more traffic to my blog.
At first the results were promising, and I was seeing some good results but then in February 2020, I saw a change in the traffic from Pinterest, the jury is still out as to whether my pinterest traffic will start to improve.
I’ m still working on the pinterest strategy with a combination of manual pinning and also using Tailwind but I have also decided that I needed to make sure that SEO was improved.
If you are wondering where to get started with an SEO strategy, then you will not be alone.
Type in SEO in a search engine and you will be hit with millions of sites all offering you their services, courses and offers. So, where do you start?
The top SEO sites I have come across consistently are:-
NeilPatel.com
They all have some free tools to choose from and I started with Neil Patel’ s Ubersuggest as this had come on recommendation from my blogger friends.
Here are 5 Key Tips For Better SEO
-
Master Keyword Research
We’ ve all heard it before keyword research but where do you get started with keyword research?
How do you find keywords that you can rank for in a hugely competitive market?
Neil Patel has a free search tool called Ubersuggest which allows you to enter your website url.
The tool will then show you the errors on your domain and the places where SEO is hurting your website.
The site has a guide that shows you how to make changes to these areas of your website to improve your SEO. The Ubersuggest tool will also allow you to set up a free account and to work through the project to improve the SEO on your site.
It teaches you how to find your competitors and what keywords they are ranking for, so that you can learn how to create content around those keywords.
If you are wondering where to get started with putting into place an SEO strategy, then try Ubersuggest Free Tool.
Another great tool I use for keyword research is the Keywords Everywhere tool. They have the basic free offering as well as a paid for version, depending on your budget.
- What is On Page and Off Page SEO
When you hear the term On Page or On Site SEO, then this means you should look at the following specific areas on your blog:-
- Crawl Accessibility
- Compelling Content
- Keyword Optimisation
- User Experience
- Page Speed
- Mobile Friendliness
- Image Optimisation
- SSL Security
- Internal Links
- Title and Description
Don’ t get confused with on-site SEO and off-site SEO, they are quite different, so I have discovered.
What is off site SEO. Also known as off page SEO, this mean the things you can do outside of your website or blog that will help to improve your rankings. Some of the off site SEO tips are
- Customer Reviews
- Social Proof
- External Links
- Popularity
- Google my Biz
- Search Console
Where can you learn more about implementing on site and off site SEO strategies to your blog.
I have used
Ask Kori.com
If you prefer short to the point sessions and have found the Ubersuggest project just a bit out of your depth then another great resource I came across is Ask Kori.
She has a fantastic You Tube channel where she gives you short videos with tips on how to improve your SEO.
I have taken her 30 Day SEO Challenge and just loved all the useful tips she provided.
She talks about both On Page SEO and also Off Page SEO and you will love how to the point and clear she is in explaining everything.
Never again will you glaze over when there is talk about SEO
3. Make your content SEO friendly
One of the mistakes blogs make is that they try to write for search engines. This is a big no no.
You should write your content for your user.
Afterall your aim is to have great user experience.
When your user has a great experience when they visit your website, they will stay around, have a look around at some of your other pages and this will help you to rank better.
This tells google that when the content was shown for those specific keywords, the user found what they were looking for and they will be inclined to show this again and again.
Let me give you an example, if you write content about how to start a blog but when your user arrives they find you are talking about something totally different, they may well click away.
What does this tell Google?
That the content shown did not meet the needs of that search term, therefore they will be less inclined to show it the next time, and you will go down in the rankings.
Another mistake is that bloggers will try to keyword stuff. This is another error. You don’ t need to keep using your keyword over and over again unless of course it makes sense to do so.
Keyword stuffing was a strategy used in the long-gone days, don’ t use this unless you want to drop in the rankings.
4. Start Link Building
What is Link Building? This means internal links and also internal links on your blog.
Internal Links are links that connect the internal pages on your site. Lots of internal links to a particular page on your site will signal to search engines that that page is important.
Internal linking needs to be done naturally. The word or term you are linking to on that page must refer to what you are talking about. It needs to make sense to the user.
External links are when you link to external websites. This helps to improve your blog ranking.
The more external links you have the better you will start to rank. External links help to provide the user with wider information and show them where else confirm the information that is on the content on your website.
When starting to build links, especially external links you need to be very careful.
You may have heard about black hat and white hat strategies. Well black hat are SEO strategies that are frowned upon by google and which were used by some bloggers to try to gain traffic to their sites. I would not recommend this at all!!
White hat strategies are the strategies that are recommended by google and they even tell you what you can and cannot do. You can learn about white hat strategies here.
5. Learn About User Experience
I know User Experience or UX as it is sometimes known, will have you wondering what that is anyway.
User Experience is how your website flows and what experience your user has when they come onto your site.
Some of the questions you will want to ask yourself when thinking about user experience:-
Is your content laid out well?
Do you have a clear menu structure?
Can your user find easily find content that they are searching for?
When you user gets to the end of the page will they know what to do
When they are ready to leave your site, will they have found what they were looking for
Just having your website up and running, does not mean that it gives a good user experience.
I know that I will be making several changes to my website to improve my SEO in this area. My site was built several years ago, I believe that it is always good to refresh and redesign your blog to keep up with the changes.
Go and take a look at your blog and evaluate it.
Better still ask someone else to evaluate it and give you feedback on how they found navigating your website and what changes you can make.
This will help you to know whether you are providing a good user experience and what changes you could make to improve your SEO for your blog.
Conclusion
I profess that I am not an expert on SEO, it is just not my passion.
I have already referred to some SEO experts in this field and I am not planning on becoming a top SEO strategist. But what I have learnt is that SEO is really important if you are going to make a success with your blog.
Part of the blogging journey is to continue learning. SEO strategies change and you will need to continue to research information about SEO and implementing these on your blog.
I hope that you have learnt some tips that will help you optimise your blog SEO.
