SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a great way to get traffic to your blog. It starts off slow, but it is quite steady once you convince Google that your blog is worthy of rankings on the first pages.
Did you know that you can actually rank faster on Google if you do a couple of easy fixes in the beginning?
If you want to optimize your blog for SEO, then I congratulate you! It’s one of the best ways to build a long term business that you can even sell at some point in the future. SEO will always very efficient.(1)
Not only that, but it’s also quite affordable for most people. You don’t need to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars in order to get people to your blog.
Also, SEO is not as difficult as people make it seem. With the right tools, you can get tons of traffic to your blog!(2)
If you’re here to find out how you can optimize your blog for SEO, you’re in the right place! In this article, we will go over some actionable tips that you can implement on your blog.
Table of Contents
OPTIMIZING YOUR BLOG FOR SEO: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
1. INTERNAL LINKING
2. WRITE UNIQUE CONTENT
3. KEYWORD RESEARCH
4. MAKE SURE YOUR BLOG IS EASY TO READ
5. BACKLINKS
FINAL THOUGHTS
OPTIMIZING YOUR BLOG FOR SEO: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Blogging is one of the best ways for beginners to start making money on the internet. You just need to get a good web hosting service, like Bluehost, and you’re ready to go.
However, there are a couple of mistakes you should avoid. First of all, don’t get upset when you don’t get traffic to your blog right away.
SEO takes a long time to build, but it’s definitely worth it. Luckily, there are a couple of things you can do in order to get traffic as soon as possible to your website.(3)
1. INTERNAL LINKING
The first thing to keep in mind is that internal linking really helps with your rankings. This is a tip that I’ve found out too late in my blogging career, but fortunately for you, it is a very easy thing you can implement right away.
Try linking to at least 2-3 other articles from your website. This will help tour pages to push each other up in the Google rankings.
Some people optimize their blog for SEO primarily with internal linking and they get over 200k pageviews per month. On some of my other more established blogs (which I started 3-4 years ago), I get hundreds of thousands of pageviews per month.(4)
The funny thing about it is that I haven’t done any link building for them (more on that later).
2. WRITE UNIQUE CONTENT
Writing unique content can really help with your blog optimization for SEO. Don’t copy other people’s content, because you will get punished by the algorithm.
Even with tools like Spinbot, that people use to spin their content, they still have a hard time ranking. Spun content did very well in the search engines about 10 years ago.
Nowadays, Google got a lot smarter and if you don’t write your own content, you will simply not rank. It’s as easy as it sounds.
Also, try writing long-form content. It doesn’t need to be as long as a small book, but do your best to go as in-depth as you can.(5)
A good metric would be to take a look at what’s ranking on the first page. If the first 3 articles are approximately 2000 words long, then you should write something similar.
Just make sure you to make it unique and relevant.
3. KEYWORD RESEARCH
Neglecting keyword research is a mistake nearly all beginner bloggers make. If you want to optimize your blog for SEO, you need to keep in mind that you will simply not rank for some keywords.
For example, you can write the perfect blog post about “How To Lose Weight”, but you will probably not rank on Google. I know it sounds depressing, but it’s the truth.
The reason why you will never rank for that specific keyword is that there are already tons of articles about the same thing written on high-authority blogs, that are decades old in some cases.(6)
What you should do in stead, is to look for long tail keywords. Let’s keep the previous example regarding weight loss: what you can do instead, is write an article titled “How To Lose Weight As A middle Aged Man”.
Already, you have a higher chance of ranking on the first page. In order to optimize your blog for SEO, you should consistently write articles around long-tail keywords.
4. MAKE SURE YOUR BLOG IS EASY TO READ
Have you ever clicked on a link in the search results and ended up on a page with a huge block of text? What was your reaction when you saw that?
If you’re like most people, you probably immediately left that website and never went back. That’s because the human brain likes consuming information in small pieces.
Instead of writing huge paragraphs, try breaking up your content with images. Also, a good rule of thumb would be to almost never write paragraphs that contain more than 2-3 sentences.
If you write shorter paragraphs, you will increase the time a user stays on your page. Therefore, Google will notice the increase in “user experience” and reward you with better rankings.(7)
5. BACKLINKS
If you want to properly optimize your blog, you should not neglect backlinks. A backlink is a link that another website gives to yours.
Google sees it as kind of a “vote”. Meaning that the more backlinks you have from high authority websites, the higher value it perceives your website to be.
However, in the past couple of years, people started using this aspect in their own advantage. Spamming backlinks to your website was working very well until recently.
As I mentioned before, Google got a lot smarter in the past 2-3 years. Therefore, it started punishing people who abuse backlink use.(8)
If you’re a beginner, I suggest to not build backlinks if you don’t know what you’re doing. You can rank high in the search engines and get traffic to your website without them.
Once you start getting more experienced, you can experiment with off page SEO stuff. Until then, try to be as ethical as possible, so that you stay safe!
FINAL THOUGHTS
You can optimize your blog for SEO in numerous ways. I highly suggest you go ahead and implement these tips on your blog.
In case you don’t have a blog, you can sign up for Bluehost, as it’s very affordable and you also get a free domain. Remember that getting traffic via SEO takes time.
If you consistently produce content and don’t give up, you will be happy that you didn’t give up. It can be a couple of months from now, but it will all be worth it in the end.