Hello, my friend and a very warm welcome back. We need SEO ( short for search engine optimization) on our blog pages to give us the new audiences we desire.
SEO works to rank our pages better in the search engines which in turn means more people are going to be finding and reading your content and this leads to more clients and ultimately more clicks and sales.
If you are wanting to blog and get paid for your efforts, then you need to read on because this is a very important step to take to make it happen quicker.
If You are not using SEO you are making a huge mistake.
Every single post on this site has been made SEO friendly, What does that mean? Let’s keep reading and find out:
This article may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission if you purchase anything. It helps to keep me in coffee when I’m writing for you. The price you pay will not be affected.
Search Engine Optimization
Put simply SEO is where your blog pages get optimized, this helps them to go higher up the page in googles search results, this then helps you with your organic traffic (free traffic) If you wish to earn money from your website this is something you need to learn and put into practice.
SEO lets you stay in front of prospective customers when they are searching for topics related to your business. Any business out there can use SEO to increase traffic significantly.
It’s better to learn it from the beginning of your blogging life, but if you are a bit down the line it is never too late.
The purpose of writing a blog is to help others by answering their questions and making sure the answer is found.
You Can Measure SEO
With tools like google analytics, it is easy to see the traffic coming from the content you write. It will show you your most popular posts.
Analytics can also show the revenue generated from the content.
Here are some tips that will help you to be found quicker :
Keyword Research
You need to decide what your post topic is going to be about, using a keyword research tool is going to save you hours of work.
The keyword research tool is going to show you the most popular terms people are searching for every second of every day.
The keyword research tool I use and recommend is called Jaxxy. It’s very fast, efficient and has lots of other features that most tools I have used before didn’t have.
Jaxxy’s Insights will also show you where you are winning and losing out to your competitors around any given topic.
It’s Important To Structure Your Posts
Your posts should have an introduction, a middle section, and a summary of the total.
In the introduction it’s important to have your keyword in the first paragraph as well as explaining what the post is going to be about, It’s also a good idea to let them know what question of theirs you will be answering.
The middle section is where you explain what the main message is, This can be done with several paragraphs and headings. The Summary is where you summarize your main ideas and bring everything all together ready to close the post.
Make sure your posts are not too short, the minimum amount should be more than 400 words. Google tends to rank posts that are in the 1000-2000 word category best.
You Need To Hook The Reader With Your Title
A lot of people skip this part, thinking it’s not important, believe me when I say it is. There is a plugin you can use in the word press back office called “headline analyzer from Monster Insights” This will give you some great help.
Something to take into consideration is the length of the title, most search engines only display 60 characters, so where possible try to keep it under that so it can all be seen. It will also get more engagement that way.
The last point about the title is to keep it motivating and positive.
Headings And Paragraphs
Paragraphs should be short and they should have their own idea contained inside. You will see a lot on a blog post that is only one line. This makes it easier for the reader to scan the post and gives the biggest likely hood they will read it all.
Headings, as well as subheadings in your article, will help your readers to understand what different parts of your text are all about. Again, they help the reader when speed reading your page. Another reason, SEO likes to see your keyword in a couple of your subheadings. (Don’t stuff the keywords into your post at every opportunity as that will be frowned upon)
Transition words will also help people to scan your writing and understand the connection between the sentences and the paragraphs.
Internal And External Links
Linking to other web pages is one of the last steps I make sure to do before publishing my post and it is necessary for your rankings in Google.
An Internal link is where you link to other posts that you have already published related to what you are currently writing about. This helps your older posts to stay current and be found easier.
You can link just one word or a whole sentence this helps your readers to see many other posts on your site.
External links, there are a couple in this post and they add value by allowing search engines to follow through from your site onto a followed link outside your blog. These could be linking to any sources you used when researching and writing your post, other people’s content who are experts in the subject you are writing about such as Wikipedia.
Want to set up your own blog step by step tutorial.
Post Regularly
You need to post regularly because then you are telling Google that your website is still alive and kicking. If you decide to stop publishing – Google will be less likely to crawl your site, and this could very easily have a negative effect on your rankings.
The whole purpose of your blog is to increase the visibility and bring more and more fresh people to your site – so try your best to produce at least one new post per week to keep your content fresh, updated, and to tell Google to come to visit your site.
Images
Nearly forgot this one. When adding images to your pages you need to fill in the Alt tag, This describes the picture for blind and partially sighted people and it is a factor Google takes into consideration in Seo and ranking.
SEO Helps Build Trust
A good solid SEO strategy will give your business the boost it needs because it will ensure consistency across content and platforms alike.
When customers see that your business is clearly defined across many channels, it invokes trust.
At this point, you will be able to leverage your brand as a trusted and authoritative player.
This can be strengthened with the following strategies:
- Strong backlinks: These links connect to other web pages and bring more authority to your site.
- Optimized content: The more user-friendly your content is as described above, the more likely you are to have returning readers.
- This strategy involves using high-quality images that are optimized as much as possible in order to not delay page-loading.
Your authority comes in time as you consistently offer content, products, and services that your audience wants and needs.
For those that tend to skip to the end here is your recap.
- Keyword Research
- It’s important to Structure your posts
- You need to hook the reader with your title
- Headings and Paragraphs
- Internal and External Links
- Post Regularly
- Images
- SEO Helps Build Trust
The Plugin I Use
This has covered the basics of on-page SEO for you. There is a WordPress Plugin that I definitely recommend installing, and it’s called the All In One SEO It can be found in your back office.
And there was you thinking all you do is write a post and hit publish, This was written to make sure you are not doing it wrong and if you have been you now know it is fixable.
Putting these tips into practice is how I gained organic traffic that is increasing every month.
I learned SEO from the beginning of my blogging life and it has stood me in good stead with traffic from the search engines. This is one of the best places to learn it from!
If you have found value in this post please share it and leave a comment.
Lisa. Founder and CEO of mistakesbloggersmake.com
Hi Lisa,
Yes, SEO will definitely bring you that traffic to grow your site. An embedded video would likewise help in increasing the time that your readers are on your site.
I’m reading from other blogs wherein they put related posts with the titles of their articles in between their paragraphs. I have copied this as well. Would these be considered internal links?
Thanks for the information, really helpful.
Marita
Hi Marita,
Yes i use that method as well and yes that is an internal link, my only advise would be to make sure you don’t put to many in.
When it comes to growing a blog and building organic traffic SEO is the best. Although SEO has a lot in it, but it still remains the best. Things like keywords,and image optimization are basic things you should learn with search engine optimization. Top of it is the high return on investment. The cost is reduced very much.
Wow, this is really interesting. I didn’t understand the concept of SEO this well I’m the last and I am really taken aback with what I am reading here. It’s pretty cool that you can tell us about the platform and also about how it works too. I just created my own website but I have not used it at all and this will help me for sure. Thanks!
Hello Jamie,
You are very welcome, Thanks for the comment.
Lisa
SEO… That bane of running content.
This is a very insightful and useful article. I really enjoyed learning all the information you passed in this article. A lot of people do SEO incorrectly and it hurts them in the long run. the information you provided in this article is super useful and shouldn’t be taken lightly if individuals want to have a successful business.
Best Regards,
Jordan
All very true Jordan. I appreciate your thoughts.
Thank you very much for stopping by.
Lisa
A good post with a great deal of usefu information.
I agree that SEO is very important if you want people to find your blog. Which of course is what it is all about if you want to make money from a blog.
The right keywords along with the right Titles is so important. I am glad you mentioned paragraphs too as many have big chunks of information without breaks that put readers off.
Thank you, a good read.
I appreciate your comments, Linda. Thanks for reading 🙂
Hello there! This is a great post! Fortunately, I started blogging and affiliate marketing with wealthy affiliate so SEO was something I used since the start. I feel like I have followed most of the tips you suggested for you post. Could probably do a bit more for some though. So far, I haven’t been seeing any income yet but at the same time, I am just reaching my 7th month. Hoping to see something soon so maybe just a bit more perseverance. Thanks for this post!
I’m with you there Mike. I’m very happy to have learned it from the beginning with Wealthy Affiliate. The income will arrive just keep writing consistently.
Hi! What a great post. I must say I agree with you because I’ve not been experiencing traffic to my blogs and this makes me very uneasy. Thanks for enlightening us on SEO, I will be looking into it and definitely will start using it. I hope I get promising results. Thanks for sharing this helpful piece of writing with us.
You are very welcome. Just keep going it will happen when you least expect it!
Hi Lisa!
SEO is really important for any blogger. It brings free, organic traffic to your site. I have started my blog and a few of my posts have been getting indexed and slowly getting ranked. I am so proud of what I have achieved so far. I also use Jaaxy for keywords and it really helpful. It is one of reasons why I have been getting indexed.
Thank you so much for sharing this article with us and I wish you all the best!
Amzy
Congratulations on all that you have achieved so far. Using Jaxxy gives you a big advantage over your competition 🙂