An SEO Guide for Bloggers
New to SEO? This SEO guide should help you out if you’re starting from nothing.
My blog has been going since 2017, and now, a lot of my traffic comes from Google. I won’t sit here and say I did X, Y, and Z to make that happen, because honestly, I wouldn’t be able to tell you how I’ve made it to the first and second page of Google!
When a blogger starts a blog, it’s because they enjoy writing. But now, with so much blogger competition out there, being a good writer isn’t enough. And what’s the point in having a blog if it’s not being read by anyone? Suddenly, being a blogger means you have to be a writer, social media manager, SEO expert, photographer, and many other things besides.
But some people aren’t necessarily tech minded. As a blogger, how often have you struggled with understanding DA, getting to know keywords, and knowing about on-page optimisation.
If you have a small business, you could hire an SEO company to sort your SEO for you. But you usually can’t do this if you’re a blogger working in your free time. So what is SEO and how can it help your blog? This SEO guide will help you out!
SEO for Starters
If you’ve had no experience with SEO, then you can still put it into practice by learning some basics. And that’s what I’m giving you today!
Text
You’ve heard that content is king (I hate that saying, but it is true), so the first thing you need to concentrate on is what you’re writing and posting.
But how is this relevant to getting people to find me on search engines? I hear you ask. Well, Google bots will scan your page and judge if it’s helpful, good or just spammy based on the content and the way it’s laid out. Based on these things, Google will put you in a higher or lower position for certain keywords. The better your content, the higher they’ll place you (this isn’t the only thing you should be doing, but it helps).
Is it a 150 word post? It’s more likely to be spam and not helpful content. Is it one long paragraph with no headings? This is deemed difficult to read by the website user, and so also goes down in Google’s estimations.
Your content should be broken up into bitesize headings, just like I’ve done in this post. SEO isn’t just about what you write, but how you write it. Google judges whether a page makes for easy reading. Reading one long paragraph full of long sentences isn’t easy.
So, you should be using headings in your text to break it up. Headings also show Google which aspects of your post are important, so make sure at least one heading contains your keyword.
Your posts should be a minimum of 400 words, so they contain enough information for your reader. Keep your sentences short and concise, and make the language easy and simple.
Images
Blogging isn’t all about the text you use, but also the images. I said above that you have to be a photographer too. This isn’t entirely true as there are plenty of stock images you can get for free online.
However, it’s not just a case of adding a photograph to a post. The photograph needs to be optimised for Twitter and Facebook, so that when you post a link to your new blog post on these platforms, the image comes up correctly.
The images within the blog post also have to be optimised. The title of the image needs to be related to your subject matter, and not just a mixture of numbers and letters. If your picture is of a cat on a sofa, then rename it ‘Catonasofa.jpeg’.
You’ll also need to include alt text. Alt text tells Google what is in your image, which is really important. It shows that your image is relevant to the text you’ve paired it with, so make sure the alt text includes keywords too.
You can use this simple SEO guide to help you with your blog, starting today. It doesn’t have to be overcomplicated. If you’re a WordPress user, download Yoast to help get you started with your SEO.
*Collaborative post
