If you’re looking to get your blog the attention it deserves, there are a few simple things you can learn about SEO to get your posts ranking higher in search results. Doing your research ahead of time and implementing some of these strategies can pay off in a big way; more traffic to your site can mean increased brand awareness, more business, and more overall traffic to your website! So the next time you sit down to write a blog, remember these tips:
Do Your Keyword Research
Keywords are extremely important to your blog post turning up in search results. You can use free tools like Google’s Keyword Planner to see the exact search terms people are typing in when they are looking for information related to your topic. Look for relevant keyword phrases that are considered low competition, meaning not as many people are searching for them but they’re still pertinent to your business. Develop blog posts around these keywords and incorporate and use them in the title and tags on the back end of your blog.
Repeat Your Keywords
Repeat your keyword phrases in the body of your blog post, as well as in the meta description of your blog. Try to repeat the phrases in the first paragraph of your post if you can manage to do so without making your writing sound unnatural. This will help Google as well as your readers easily determine what your post is about. The meta description of your blog is what shows up underneath your title in Google search results, and lets your readers know what kind of content they are about to read, so it’s important that this is relevant to what you’re writing about.
Write Good Content
Using clever keywords won’t do you much good if you’re content isn’t easily digestible, interesting, and appealing to your readers. Google tracks how long people stay on the pages of your website; if they start to see a pattern of people reading your posts and almost immediately leaving, they will determine that your content isn’t very valuable and they will penalize you in search rankings. You should also incorporate engaging visual content that is relevant to your keywords and tag those images in your “alt” text. Creating good content is still the best thing you can do to make your blog posts readable!
Keep It Short And Sweet
Search engines only use the first 500 words of your blog post to determine how it will categorize, store, and rank your information; so make sure to make those first 500 words count! In fact, if you can avoid going over 500 words entirely, that’s even better!
SEO seems complicated, but if you know some of the basics you will greatly improve your odds of showing up high in results. Follow these basic rules and you should start to see a big difference in your blog traffic!
